"I'm a French national leaving in Asia (Philippines, China) and I'm in full agreement with you regarding food inflation. Although small, I decided to sell my investment in agriculture (through the ETF DBA) and prefer to be oriented in stock shares at a later appropriate time.

"Regarding the remark of a subscriber (3 Feb 2011 / Email of the day (2) - More on speculation in agricultural commodities: "China has 800 millions peasants. Higher agriculture prices should not be bad for them."), unfortunately I'm afraid that higher prices benefit mostly to intermediaries and only very little to the peasants, who are not organized (even in Europe, we have exactly the same situation for small farmers - including my parents, now retired), do not know/ follow the stock market and commodity prices, and usually sell their productions (cereals, cotton, etc.) several months/ 1 year ahead (at a fixed price). Furthermore, they are fully affected by the high costs of basic products such as fertilizers that they need and pay at current prices.

"I believe that the ones gaining from the higher prices are usually the very big farmers and the intermediaries/ institutions, able to stock productions and/ or to negotiate their prices higher.

"However, I agree also that we are a very small part in this market and therefore it's up to each of us to decide what is appropriate regarding the decency of such holding.

David Fuller's view Thank you for this informative email, and given my earlier comments, I totally agree with your concluding sentence.