With summer just beginning, I’m forecasting plenty of activity for July and August grain and soybean markets.

Recently, the government--pressured by Congress--disclosed a probe into potential oil market manipulation. The politicians want to show they’re doing something about high gas prices before the presidential election.

Over the holiday weekend, I watched There Will Be Blood, the story of an oilman at the turn of the century. Oil was so plentiful in parts of California during that time that it literally seeped out of the ground. Do you think, “Perhaps those days are now behind us?”

Many commodity prices have dropped sharply in the past few weeks. The main excuse: The dollar has rallied off its lows.

Rice was in the limelight this past week. Costco and Sam’s Club limited the amount of rice customers could buy because of the irrational exuberance of its rice customers. The rice chart below (this is a fairly thin market that’s not too actively traded in the futures) looks like an accelerated rocket ride to the moon. Historically, these kinds of moves always seem to end poorly.

Last week, the Federal Reserve released the minutes from its March 18 Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting. At that meeting, the Fed cut the fed funds rate by 75 basis points to the current level of 2.25 percent. This raises the following question: If inflation is such a real concern, why would you lower rates?

This weekend Fox News reported the stock market--as measured by the S&P 500--is up 70 percent since the bottom of the bull market, which started in October 2002.

In this issue, I’m covering the outlook for three major food markets--corn, soybeans and wheat--and I’ll answer the following question: Should food futures be a component of your investment portfolio?

The subprime crisis began to unfold last summer as lenders started to default on those mortgages given to people with poor credit histories. The assumption was home prices always go up.

The Minneapolis Grain Exchange (MGE) is the nation’s smallest commodity exchange. The MGE has only one actively traded commodity futures contract: spring wheat.