My Comments: As a financial advisor who is asked for investment advice, an important consideration is the age of the person seeking the advice. Someone age 40 is likely to get a different answer from me than someone age 80, especially if we’re talking about the need for income when working is no longer an option.

Increasingingly, with global warming, with the growth of a middle class in places that we don’t normally think of as having a middle class (China, Brazil, India, etc.) and places that have over my lifetime seen a lot of starvation, the idea of food reserves and investment returns never appeared in the same sentence. But increasingly this is a real issue, especially if you are 40.

Not only does this impact your cost of living, but there are opportunities here for those of you who are looking to grow your money.

By Dorothy Hinchcliff Bloomberg News

Stockpiles of the biggest crops will decline for a third year as drought parches fields across three continents, raising food-import costs already forecast by the United Nations to reach a near-record $1.24 trillion.

Combined inventories of corn, wheat, soybeans and rice will drop 1.8 percent to a four-year low before harvests in 2013, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates. Crops in the U.S., the biggest exporter, are in the worst condition since 1988, heat waves are battering European crops and India’s monsoon rainfall already is 20 percent below normal. The International Grains Council began July by forecasting record harvests. It ended with a prediction for a 2 percent drop in output.

The speed of the destruction drove corn prices to a record today and soybean prices to an all-time high last month, while wheat went to a four-year high. For investors, crops are the best-performing commodities this year, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Macquarie Group Ltd. and Credit Suisse Group AG say the trend will continue. An index of 55 food items tracked by the United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization jumped 6.2 percent in July, the biggest increase since November 2009, the Rome-based agency reported today, less than two years after record prices pushed 44 million people into extreme poverty and contributed to uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East.

“People thought we were going to be swimming in corn by the end of the year,” said Kelly Wiesbrock, who helps manage $1.3 billion of assets for Harvest Capital Strategies, a San Francisco-based hedge fund. “Then the month of June hit and into July, and it’s just been a train wreck.”

Top Commodities

Wheat gained 42 percent to $9.275 a bushel this year on the Chicago Board of Trade, soybeans appreciated 35 percent to $16.24 a bushel, and corn rose 28 percent to $8.2625 a bushel, after today touching a record $8.2975. They were the biggest advances in the Standard & Poor’s GSCI Spot Index of 24 raw materials, which increased 2.6 percent.

The U.S. drought in June was the widest since December 1956 and the past 12 months were the hottest on record, weather data show. While the USDA anticipated a record harvest as recently as June, it cut the domestic corn forecast by 12 percent on July 11, the most since at least 1990. The estimate will be reduced again when the department reports Aug. 10, according to the average of 29 analyst forecasts compiled by Bloomberg.

The American drought is spreading beyond agriculture into power and fuel production. U.S. nuclear plants’ output on July 27 was the lowest for the day since 2001 because water was too hot to be an effective coolant, government data show. Parched conditions will spread into North Dakota and central Texas through October and last across the Midwest, the main growing region, the Camp Springs, Maryland-based Climate Prediction Center said Aug. 2.