A couple of recent articles (Foreign cropland deals and Professional investors look toward overseas farmland) show clearly how much action there currently is about securing food sources in the future. Many players are involved, from countries buying or leasing foreign land, to investment firms and hedge funds.

Agricultural commodities have become quite hot and are expected to become even hotter.

In the future, we can expect to see more of such land acquisition, we will see more alliances, like the “Black Sea Wheat Pool” in which Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan are supposedly joining forces to build a strong wheat sort of OPEC. Although considering the relationship between Russia and Ukraine about natural gas, one can wonder what will happen with this.

We must expect strategies about food supplies that will remind us of what we have seen about oil supplies. Politics are going to play an increasingly important role. After all, we can live without oil, but not without food. There will be aggressive moves from countries that are not self-sufficient, first friendly like the land purchases and leases, but there probably will be a point when this might not be enough and regional conflicts will happen. Some exporting countries will also take a more aggressive stance on prices and on availability, but they also will have to be aware that too much arrogance might end up in serious tensions.

In my view, we are going to see very interesting tactics that will include food, energy, trade agreements, diplomacy and military threats as part of the whole bargaining process.

Similarly, we can expect to see more tensions between private firms involved in food and governments. Locally, we can expect nationalizations of land and factories. More regulations of the markets will take place, probably after excesses from privately owned money, investors and businesses will create another “bubble” with agricultural commodities futures contracts, that will end up destabilizing food markets in a somehow similar manner as the financial world has acted for many years before it faced a meltdown.

Copyright 2009 The Happy Future Group Consulting Ltd.