"we're one major crop failure short of a real crisis".

The quote I used for the title of this blog is from a quote from the FAO assessing the bleak situation in global grain supplies.  On Saturday, I was at The Chicago Farmers Farmland Investment Fair speaking about investing internationally in farmland. Egypt's food crisis was a precipitating event for the riots, and now, NewScrientist has posted an article http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20100-egypt-and-tunisia-rocked-by-the-global-food-crisis.htm that listed a group of countries developed by the Japanese investment firm Nomura that are likely to experience food riots:

Egypt,

Algeria

Morocco, 

Hong Kong,

Bangladesh,

Sri Lanka.

Tunisia,

Romania

and Ukraine

The irony is that at least some of these countries like the Ukraine and Romania are also areas of great investment potential. The great trick for  will be to figure out how their could be foreign investment in farmland while at the same time development of robust local food supplies for these countries populations.