Some of these futures are being bet on the ethanol fuel industry. According to Christopher Brodie, a partner at UK-based commodities hedge fund Krom River, this tussle over grain adds a Hobson's choice to the Peak Oil dilemma.
"Once the ethanol plants open, we will link the price of petrol to the price of bread, because the price of wheat will be settled by who pays more, the oil industry or the food industry."
Like Murphy's Law, bad news only gets worse. The only sunshine spot here was the brief picking season which blossomed in Europe due to the warmer weather. Fruits and vegetables matured faster than expected, with supermarkets registering fantastic sales.
The ongoing war in Lebanon is taking our eyes from a possibly epic humanitarian disaster, the same way the heatwave of 2003 killed 52,000 Europeans in one of the deadliest climate-related disasters in Western history. Close to 15,000 Frenchmen were parched to death when the media focused on the humanitarian crisis du jour in Iraq.
The death toll during the first few months of Operation Iraqi Freedom didn't come close to the summer time victims of Jacques Chirac's eloquence.
When people are being French-fried or freedom-fried - on either end - it is great to divert their attention to an external cause. Wars can be sparked off by any cockamamie reason; profit, wealth and still waters await for those who prevail.
Statesmen ranging from Kofi Annan to Mikhail Gorbachev have repeatedly warned off future wars waged over the most basic of natural resources - water.
China and India - two of the most populous nations - have long-running issues with the Brahmaputra River while Turkey and Syria nearly went to war over a Euphrates dam. The fertile Nile in Egypt may be parched black by a clogged Blue Nile source in Ethiopia, or a diverted White Nile font in Uganda and Sudan.
The giant Iguazu falls on the Brazil-Argentina border has now flowed to a trickle, enough to strain ties between the two South American giants.
Back in the Middle East, Israel may permanently cross the Hasbani and Litani rivers it has long coveted in Lebanon; a dormant casus belli that is rarely mentioned in the media.
Imagine a world when peak oil meets peak grain and peak water at a confluence called peak mayhem?
And we have not even skimmed the surface of troubled waters ahead, spawned by the troubles we caused before.
When the heatwave struck Germany, officials in its eastern zone fretted over World War II-era munitions which may surface on dried-up riverbeds.
Those time bombs never cease to tick.
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