Imagine you supply the world's biggest supermarket chains with breakfast cereals, bottled beer and sliced bread. Or that you are one of the world's biggest meat producers, buying corn to feed cattle whose meat is your bottom line.
Now imagine prices of wheat, corn and other agricultural commodities, which comprise much of your input costs, jump 50 per cent in a matter of weeks because of a drought in Russia that has caused catastrophic crop failure.
Worse, Moscow slaps a ban on exports. That is exactly what has happened to companies such as Tyson Foods, Anheuser-Busch InBev, General Mills, Kellogg and Kraft. Contrary to the fears of many investors, however, these big food companies are likely to weather the turmoil in commodities markets .