The market is mightier than the sword

Until now, rocketing wheat prices have pleased farmers and traders and that's pretty much it. To everyone else it's meant problems ranging from expensive loaves of bread to food riots. But now it seems rising wheat prices could be producing unexpected benefits for a new group - the Army.

The rise in wheat prices could be solving a problem that guns and ammo have failed to do - and that's convince Afghan farmers to stop growing poppies. Until now they've (understandably) been reluctant to destroy their crops with nothing else to sustain themselves. Now that wheat is something of a gold mine the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation is seeing farmers turn away from the heroin crop.

No doubt canny investors amonst you will have spotted the opportunity here - as poppy production falls, heroin prices will rise. So invest in smack now and reap the rewards in the coming months - not much different from banking stocks I'd argue.