A great short-term investment: stockpile food

I'd never thought of it this way, but the Wall Street Journal points out that rising food prices mean that you could probably get a better return on investment by stockpiling food than by investing in a one-year certificate of deposit:

Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.

Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year. And some prices are rising even more quickly.

This is really interesting, I recommend reading the whole thing.

via Like Merchant Ships