Smart Investing Daily has been banging the drum on global food inflation issues and shortages. The skyrocketing prices of foodstuffs driven by consumption and a weak U.S. dollar are wreaking havoc on the living expenses of the average consumer around the world; you can read our commentary here.

Energy prices, namely crude oil, are also at record levels, further exacerbating global cost-of-living expenses in both the goods and services that we buy — as well as food. Interesting enough, one of the “solutions” to our energy problem may in fact seriously endanger our most precious commodity of all, WATER.

Water, Water Everywhere, but Only a Small Amount to Drink…

I find it fascinating that we can trade just about anything these days. You can bet on the rise and fall of the prices of everything from corn to oil, electricity, soybeans, natural gas, timber and even pork bellies. Heck, if you wanted to you can even make investments in the weather and the amount of rainfall in a certain period of time. (Farmers may use these sorts of investment vehicles to protect their crop prices and yields.)

But you can’t trade water on an exchange…

The human body is composed of over 70% water. Water is even more essential than food for our basic survival. In fact, you can only live about three to five days without water; however, there is evidence to prove that a healthy adult can last 30 to 40 days without food!

Water is so necessary, but potable water is NOT a tradable commodity like oil nor is its scarcity the topic of many headlines. All life on Earth needs water to survive and grow; we don’t “need” oil.

Maybe we take it for granted because nature gives us a “free” supply in the form of rain, glacial runoff and underground aquifers that don’t require much to tap into. But what if that supply becomes tainted?

Water covers about 70% of the Earth’s surface, most of it being salt. Freshwater is available, but very limited in comparison, especially in certain areas… and not all of it is drinkable. Fresh water is found in a few places on Earth:

• Ground sources such as groundwater, hyporheic zones and aquifers make up about 1.6% of the total water found on Earth.
• Precipitation, which includes rain, hail, snow, fog, etc., equals about .001% of total water on Earth.
• Surface water such as rivers, streams, glaciers is about 3%.

Less than 5% of our total water supply is fresh water. Now there are some new technologies that are changing that. We can also get clean fresh water through desalinization. A Jan. 17, 2008, article in The Wall Street Journal stated that “Worldwide, 13,080 desalination plants produce more than 12 billion gallons of water a day.”

While that may seem like there is a large amount of drinking water available, consider the facts: Read more