Bunge Ltd. (BG), fertilizer and oilseed producer, said it will buy Corn Products International Inc. (CPO) for $4.4 billion, or $56 a share, a 31% premium to its Friday closing price.

The purchase will help Bunge expand its product line to include Corn Products’ starches, syrups and sweeteners.

The deal will help Bunge diversify its sources of revenue with a “solid cash-flow business,” Chief Executive Alberto Weissar told Reuters. Weissar expects the deal to be closed in the fourth quarter of 2008 with a bump in earnings coming as soon as late 2009 or early 2010.

If this critical resource disappears, it could send the commodities market spiraling into a catastrophic domino effect.

This is the third installment of a new Money Morning series highlighting investment opportunities created by the global bull market in commodities. There’s a classic squeeze going on in the timber markets right now.

Whether his travels take our commodities guru, Kevin Kerr, to the Middle East or the Midwest of the U.S., the stories are very similar. Most people are concerned about the rising costs of agricultural commodities. And they should be. The commodity boom is real.

The world has certainly given us a lot, and we keep asking for more. We have a need for many natural and precious resources that nature has to offer, but we must know where to look. The better we can find and extract these resources, the better we can use nature’s gifts to their full potential.