It’s going to touch everything.

It will make a difference in what we eat, where we travel, how we heat and cool our homes, even how much we save and spend.

Actually, these sorts of changes are already taking place. But over the next decade, the effects are likely to be felt more than ever.

I’m convinced that if you want to be a successful investor in the coming decade, you need to focus on the concept behind these changes. It’s one simple word…

Scarcity.

You’ve likely read about it for years. I’m sure you’ve already felt the effects to some extent. Put simply, the world needs resources like oil, steel, coal, copper, and grain to survive. But they are becoming more scarce… and expensive.

To get a handle on the scale of this issue, just look around you.

Every important trend we’re seeing in the world — record debt and deficits… soaring gold and silver prices… the weakening dollar… food shortages… riots in the Middle East… even global warming — all have one thing in common.

These are all either caused because we have limited natural resources, or they make the problem even worse.

I’ll be blunt. That’s not great news, especially in a country like the United States that’s accustomed to cheap energy and food.

But it’s good news if you’re an investor in any of the hundreds of companies that can deliver the raw goods and resources desperately sought around the world. That’s because there isn’t a more attractive way to make money than to be on the selling side of a market desperate for your product.

Demand from every corner of the world
Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about.

Right now, half the cement used in the world is being used by one nation — China. With that sort of demand, you have serious pressure building under prices.

China’s economy just clocked in at a blistering 10% annual growth rate. If China keeps growing at its current rate, in just five years it will be 61% larger… which, keeping things simple, means it will need roughly 61% more raw materials compared with today.

Even if it grows half that rate, demand would rise about 30%. That’s enormous.

But here’s the kicker. It’s not just China.

Oil, coal, steel, copper, tin and other basic commodities are needed in every growing economy in the world.

Suppliers simply can’t keep up. And we’re not talking about a few tiny Third-World nations here. When China goes from exporting oil to being the world’s second-largest importer, it’s a big deal. Meanwhile, it’s a similar story in India, Indonesia and Brazil. To me, that’s a “buy signal” for resource stocks.

Emerging nations already gobble up more than half the world’s resources. And their per-person consumption is still amazingly low — nowhere near what we use in the United States.

Even so, the demand already seen has been enough to create major profit opportunities:

• In just two years, copper prices are up 200%, nickel up 160% and zinc up 125%.
  
  
• Gold has risen every year for a decade, smashing through its old record of $850 set in 1980.
   
• Silver just reached a 31-year peak above $36 per ounce.
   
• “Boring” cotton has almost tripled in a year. In the first 48 days of 2011 it was up 65%.
   
• Corn futures saw a spike of more than 70% since June. Wheat prices spiked 35%. And since beef, pork and dairy producers have to buy mountains of feed for their livestock, rising grain prices will probably spill over into higher meat prices.
   
• Food prices hit an all-time high in February. The United Nation’s Food Price Index rose for the eighth consecutive month, setting the highest prices since records began. Prices are now above 2008’s record levels that sparked food riots in 32 countries.

Action to Take –> In the natural resources patch, it’s usually the “big boys” like oil and gold that make the front-page news. But as you can see, these headline grabbers are just the surface of today’s story.

Dig a bit deeper and you’ll find powerful bull markets unfolding in a dozen less-followed hard-asset markets, all fueled by that one word… scarcity.

Note: I recently put together a free webcast that details three of the largest scarcity imbalances I’ve found… that are leading to soaring prices. Click here to watch now and learn the best spots to invest.