Posted on 01/18/2010 8:10:50 PM PST by Comrade Brother Abu Bubba
Legendary investor Jim Rogers remains bullish on commodities and says the world will soon face food shortages.
"The fundamentals (for agriculture) have gotten better," he says.
"The inventories are now at the lowest they've been in decades, not in years.”
And that trend is just intensifying, Rogers tells CNBC.
“ Things are getting worse. Many farmers can’t get loans to buy fertilizer now, even though we have big shortages developing "
And what will be the end result of this dynamic?
"Sometime in the next few years we're going to have very serious shortages of food everywhere in the world, and prices are going to go through the roof," Rogers said.
Agriculture is his favorite sector in the commodity space, but Rogers likes other commodities as well.
Take oil, for example.
“Over the next decade or so, oil is going to go much higher, because known reserves of oil are declining at a very rapid rate,” Rogers said.
He also favors gold for the long term, saying that if it drops $200 an ounce, he’ll buy more.
But if you’re looking for precious metals to acquire now, Rogers recommends silver or palladium, because they haven’t soared as high as gold.
Many experts share Rogers’ bullishness on commodities.
Goldman Sachs, for example, sees the S&P GSCI Enhanced Total Return Index appreciating 17.5 percent this year.
“Demand is growing on a global basis,” Peter Sorrentino, a money manager at Huntington Asset Advisors, told Bloomberg.
Translation: Oil prices increased during the year while paradoxically the rig utilization rate decreased 14 percent. Divergence.
Fewer rigs working means less oil discovered and developed. Expect oil prices of about $100/Bbls. in 2011 increasing to $200-300/Bbls. in about 2012.
Food prices will increase from the current levels as well.
Must be time to panic then. Well, OK.
turn the water on in California’s central valley, already!
Farmers can’t get loans because the government is borrowing all that, in the form of selling bonds. The unpredictable, chaotic business climate fostered by government makes it a bad time to invest a lot of money. They’re just buying bonds.
Why do they call it canning and not jarring?
When people cant buy ornamentals for need of food the farmers will plant what pays.
He told of visiting a woman and noticing that she had 50-100 5 pound bags of sugar stacked in her kitchen. Given that sugar was a "Rationed Commodity" during WWII, he asked her what she was going to do with all the sugar?
She immediately replied that she had been forced to purchase all the sugar before.... "THE HOARDERS DID"!
I remember many other bizarre tales about the behavior of folks during the WWII rationing days! Such actions were observed during the gasoline rationing during the Carter years!!!
Government "Planning" always results in unintended consequences!!!
Not only that, but the soviets in the federal government are planning to take 59 million acres of US farmland out of production— no such thing as private property here— to use as a phony globalist ‘carbon offset’ and plant trees on it.
This is a plan by the feds that Ag periodicals have uncovered and is currently in the works.
“Food prices will increase from the current levels as well.”
If the U.S. government killed the “ethanol as fuel program” and freed corn up for consumption and export, food prices would fall and the U.S. would be feeding the world again.
Bump!
btt
She has Pelosi eyes.
INCORRECT.
It's less jarring to call it canning :-)
Besides, the noun "can" predates the noun "jar" by a few centuries, according to M-W.
Just another chapter in the Marxist playbook.
If you look at the chart from ODS/Weekly Rig Count for the Gulf of Mexico, the information is just as stated.
59.5 % now, 73.2% one year ago. Less rigs working as compared to last year = future price increases in oil.
Major new oil finds/production, plus rising rig counts in the Gulf of Mexico and Brazil, combined with China’s reduced demand, means lower oil prices.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.