The food crisis — caused by sky-high rice prices and grain prices — has now hit Americans, prompting many visitors to this site to ask: Is there a rice ETF?

According to the Washington Times, “Costco and other grocery stores in California reported a run on rice, which has forced them to set limits on how many sacks of rice each customer can buy.”

Meanwhile, reports the paper, “Filipinos in Canada are scooping up all the rice they can find and shipping it to relatives in the Philippines, which is suffering a severe shortage that is leaving many people hungry.

The reports of food rationing in California come as US rice futures hit record highs.

Many smart investors are asking: Is there a rice ETF? And the internet is hopping with questions about the existence of commodities ETFs to profit from the situation.

Soft commodities are now the best-performing sub-set of the commodity bull market,” says Eric Roseman in the Offshore A-Letter.

“It’s the perfect storm for investors — especially when just about everything else in the investment world has continued to post big declines since last July.

“Commodity service-providers have launched a blizzard of commodities ETFs over the last 12 months. These new ETFs allow both individual and institutional investors access to hot commodities like coffee, wheat, sugar and corn, to name only a few.””It’s agricultural Armageddon,” says ETF expert Mike Burnick.

“The escalating food crisis is easily the biggest problem facing Asia and other emerging markets — much more troubling than the credit crunch. After all, people in these nations can do without bank loans or new credit cards, but they can’t stop eating!”