Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Sweeten Your Portfolio with Stevia First (DBA, KFT, WMT) - SmallCapNetwork

Many will buy retail stocks such as Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT).  Other legendary investors such as Jim Rogers and George Soros establish positions in commodities.

But the one thing that virtually all investors agree upon is the bullish future for agriculture and commodities.  Jim Rogers has exclaimed in interviews that it if it is the agriculture sector, he is buying.  Much of this has to do with the growth of the middle class around the world.  There is even an exchange traded note focused on the agriculture investments of Jim Rogers, the Elements Rogers International Commodity (NYSE: RJA).

This is why Warren Buffett buys railroads: to transport US crops to port to be shipped overseas.  As China, Brazil, India, Indonesia and other nations have entered the consumer marketplace, literally billions of new customers are lining up at the table for agricultural products and commodities.  Jim Jubak, financial columnist for MSN Money, has deemed the burgeoning consumer class around the globe as the most important investment trend of the decades ahead.

As the diets evolve of more affluent consumers, sweeteners become one of the most desired components.   This is easily seen in the sweetener products offered by Kraft Foods, Inc and/or carried on the shelves of Wal-Mart Stores around the globe.  Much of the industry goes into the components of the PowerShares DB Agriculture.  Overall, the global market for sweeteners is estimated to be around $60 billion annually.

Much of the sweetener market is sugar.  But that is rapidly changing for a variety of factors.  A major consideration is the damage done to the environment.  There are many negative aspects to sugar from which natural substitutes such as Stevia do not suffer.

This is one of the many appealing features to Stevia First Corp as an investment in the sweetener sector of the agriculture industry.  Stevia extract, which is 200 to 400 times sweeter than sugar, has been around for literally centuries, primarily used in eastern Asia.  It was approved in the United States in 2008 by the Food and Drug Administration.  Europe issued its approval in last year.  It has gained widespread acceptance:  In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Al Sharpton talked about how he used it in is tea to lose so much weight by giving him his sweetener fix for the day.

To service this worldwide market for sweetener products in the tens of billions, Stevia First is setting up shop in the Central Valley of California.  That region is as fertile as any in the world.  In addition, it also offers proximity to the major transportation facilities of the West Coast: in other words, direct access to billions of consumers in Asia who grew up using Stevia.  As such, the global market for artificial sweeteners is already around $6 billion.  In the United States, it is about $1billion already.  Stevia Corp. offers the small cap investor not only the best of both worlds in investing (low price with big, established market for product) in the agriculture sector, but literally access to billions of consumers around the globe.