Time to stock up on sugar (and this is a great deal on it) and coffee. From Bloomberg:

Drought in Brazil, the world’s biggest producer of coffee, sugar and oranges, is harming crops and drying the Amazon River to its lowest in 47 years.

[…]

Sugar rose to the highest price in seven months in New York today and has jumped 29 percent this month because of concern the South American drought threatens global supplies. Orange juice gained 15 percent this month and coffee soared 33 percent this year. The dry weather will persist at least until mid- October, said Willians Bini, a meteorologist at Sao Paulo-based weather forecaster Somar Meteorologia.

“Farmers will have to be really patient because rains are delayed for at least a month,” Bini said in a Sept. 20 telephone interview.

La Nina, as the cyclical cooling of equatorial Pacific Ocean waters is known, triggers changes in weather across the globe, including dryness in parts of Brazil and hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean.

Coffee crops in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais may be hurt by the driest weather in four years as Spring starts in the Southern Hemisphere and trees begin flowering for next year’s harvest, Joaquim Goulart de Andrade, a manager at the Cooxupe cooperative, said in a telephone interview last week. The group produces 13 percent of all Brazilian arabica coffee. Minas Gerais accounts for about half of the country’s output.

[…]

“Yields have already been seriously damaged,” said Costa, chief executive officer of the sugar maker controlled by Tereos, Europe’s third-largest sugar producer. “The losses are already there.”

Sugar-cane output may fall for the first time in 11 years in 2011, said Gustavo Correa, an analyst at research firm FG/Agro in Ribeirao Preto, a sugar and ethanol industry hub in northern Sao Paulo state.

“The weather is also harming seedlings, reducing output potential for coming crops,” Correa said in a Sept. 17 telephone interview.

Food inflation isn’t a fear, it’s going to be the world’s new reality.