“Corn is in trouble because of the wet spring that has drenched the midwest,” says Justice Litle in Taipan Daily.

Yesterday, the USDA said in a report that American corn output will be down significantly from last year’s estimate.

And that forecast was put together before the biblical drenching the Midwest suffered in the past week, when another 12 inches of rain flooded already saturated fields.

All this is sending corn futures soaring. Looking at the chart, you can see how corn has gone ballistic. Also, on the bottom of the chart, RSI (a momentum oscillator) has just given a bullish buy signal.

After this latest rainout, many corn farmers will switch to soybeans, which can be planted until the end of June with less impact on yields. And that means the corn that does grow will be much more valuable.

Jurojin already recommended our subscribers go long corn last week — after it bounced higher off of its 50-day moving average. Now, they’re racking up nice open gains, and our first profit target looms dead ahead.

Is it too late to get in on corn? Not by a long shot. We’ve seen this kind of horrible start to the crop year before — in 1993. Then, traders were slow to react to massive flooding.

The best way to play this is corn futures or options on corn futures. If you aren’t in the futures market, you could try the PowerShares DB Agriculture ETF (DBA), which tracks a basket of corn, wheat, soybeans and sugar.

“Corn is going to go higher,” says John Mauldin in his Outside the Box.

Bad weather has meant that not enough got planted, and that will probably hurt yields in the fall. This is going to mean even higher meat prices and ethanol prices. Corn ethanol is such a bad idea. This is what happens when government decides to mess with the market.

Anecdotal inflation note: I eat two chicken fajita pitas without cheese from Jack-in-the Box for lunch about three times a week (after the gym!). I throw away the pita bread and just eat the chicken at my desk. The last three days the price has been the same, but the amount of chicken is noticeably smaller, perhaps 25% smaller. Where’s the hedonic price adjustment in the BLS statistics for that? A friend of mine notes that the filet from his favorite steak house is now seven ounces instead of eight. But the steak is still the same price. Maybe portion control will finally get America to go on a diet.

“Soaring prices of grains, dairy and meat have been grabbing global headlines,” says Jennifer Yousfi in Money Morning, “but other commodities have been on the rise as well.

“I’m not talking about the increases in daily staples that make the front page, but those little extras that make daily life just a little bit sweeter – coffee, cocoa and sugar. We might not need them, but we definitely want them. And inflation is putting upward pressure on the price of these soft commodities just as it is on oil and grains such as wheat and rice.”

As demand for food increases, it’s a great time to invest in a livestock ETF, says Ian Davis in The Growth Stock Wire: “Hog farmers are not running charities. When the input costs for hog producers soar, the price of hogs must also rise. By buying hogs, we are piggybacking (excuse the pun) on the uptrend in agriculture and crude oil.

“So when the uptrend finally begins, how should we play it?”

Read on how to profit when this upswing kicks in with this livestock ETF.

“When the gold price rises, jewelry gets more expensive,” says Tom Dyson in DailyWealth. It’s the same way with farm animals. When the corn price rises, livestock must get more expensive. Corn has doubled in the past 18 months, but livestock prices are still in the same range they were six years ago. They will catch up with corn.”

Tom also recommends that his readers invest in a livestock ETF.

“Two trade in London under the symbols CATL.L and HOGS.L,” says Tom. “They track the Dow Jones AIG sub-indexes for live cattle and hogs.”