“Food consumers worldwide are going to have to pay more,” Hurt said. “We ended 2007 with our monthly inflation rate on food nearly 5 percent higher. I think we’ll see times in 2008 where the food inflation rate might be as much as 6 percent. “I also think we’ll have discussions about food security in 2008. We’ll have discussions about whether we should allow the foreign sector to buy our food. Is food a strategic item that we need to keep in our country?”

For some U.S. crops, it’s almost too late. The 2007 U.S. wheat crop is virtually sold out, while domestic soybean stocks soon will fall below a 20-day supply. Corn inventories are stronger, but with demand from export markets, the livestock industry and ethanol plants, supplies also could be just as scarce for the 2008 crop. The condition could become more serious if adverse weather trims U.S. crop yields this summer and fall. The situation is reminiscent of another run on U.S. grain one generation ago, Hurt said.“We’ve seen the relationship of the U.S. dollar to foreign currencies change substantially in the last few years,” he said. “The European euro has increased in value relative to the U.S. dollar by 40 percent. What that means is that with the same number of euros, the Europeans can buy 40 percent more in the United States than they would have been able to buy three or four years ago.”

“The last time we had this kind of uncertainty on food supplies was the early 1970s when the former Soviet Union became a major buyer of wheat in the United States. In the fall of 1972 they were such aggressive buyers that they essentially bought the pantry out of our available wheat supplies. In 1973 we also virtually ran out of soybeans. The U.S. Congress and president responded by saying we cannot let the rest of the world have our strategic food supply, so they embargoed all foreign soybean shipments until we could replenish the supply.”