BOOM, financial meltdown, crisis, recession. For the past two years, the world has been in the thrall of the greatest challenge ever to confront modern capitalism.
In the developed world, we have been consumed by concerns over employment and the potential for social unrest, which again have been inflamed by worries over the prospect of default on debts by governments.
But the unfolding drama in the ego-inflated world of high finance distracted attention from an equally worrying dilemma - with an identical acronym - that may be even more challenging for global security.
In less developed economies, the GFC has been a problem for more than five years. In their case, however, the ''F'' stands for food. And the question on the lips of many developing countries' leaders is: will there be enough to sustain a rapidly growing global population?
It is a question that raised its head midway through the decade, as food prices experienced their steepest rise in 30 years, sparking food riots in some countries that saw the overthrow of governments and offering opportunities for others.
A number of factors contributed to this. Rising populations, encroaching urbanisation on to agricultural land, a switch from food production to biofuels, stagnating agricultural yields and a rapid lift in wealth in Asia leading to increased food demand.
Boil all that down and what you end up with is reduced supply and increased demand. And that means higher prices.
Unfortunately, given the history of government and bureaucratic interference in agricultural markets and trade from the richest nations to the very poorest, it is unlikely that even the spectre of widespread famine will jolt the international community into achieving worthwhile reform in the near term.
When it comes to agriculture, the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade has seen no agreement, neither in specific or general terms, for decades, just continual bickering and a promise to meet again in a few years.
As one of the world's biggest exporters of food, Australia has the potential to be a major influence on developing a global solution to what is a looming international problem. At the very least, we are in a position to capitalise on an expected increased demand for higher-quality food in the region.
For most of the past decade, our place in the international pecking order has been defined almost exclusively by our mineral and energy resources.
It has dominated economic news and been foremost in the minds of our leaders. All those bulk carriers, steaming north from ports in Queensland, NSW and West Australia to a rapidly growing China, underpinned our wealth and saved us from the recession that has ravaged the rest of the developed world.
For many years, it was thought that our mining success would squeeze out our rural exporters by pushing our currency higher. But our rural industries have survived and, with water now spreading across the interior, face at least two years of strong production.
Despite being a major contributor to export earnings, rural Australia always has taken a much lower profile.
To a large extent that is because the fundamental unit of production within agriculture is the family. Family farms overwhelmingly dominate rural production in Australia, as in other developed countries.
The vagaries of the weather, and gyrating commodity prices has put broadacre dryland cropping and grazing beyond the acceptable risks that most corporations can bear.
The family-run farm may be a sophisticated operation, highly mechanised and market-savvy.
But a family will work for next to nothing when times are tough and accept dismal returns that a corporation simply cannot tolerate.
Big companies usually are involved only at the service end - providing finance and equipment - or in more highly controlled environments such as feedlot production.
This may be about to change.
Just as our mineral resources have been targeted by foreign buyers attempting to shore up security of supply, our rural industries are likely to be targeted.
The British private equity group Terra Firma last year bought the Packer family's extensive cattle operations in the top end, while the IIFCO group in Dubai took a 20 per cent stake in Australian Agricultural Co when Elders decided to reduce its stake.
More recently, CSR was approached by Chinese group Bright Foods to sell its sugar business, a deal that may be revisited given the Federal Court kyboshed CSR's attempted corporate split.
Accounting firm PPB believes Australian agriculture is an obvious target for further investment.
Our rural assets are still keenly priced when compared with similar operations in North America and New Zealand. And our proximity to an increasingly wealthy Asia, from India through to Japan, holds the promise of higher prices and constant demand.
It's not all bright lights and opportunities, however. The massive price hikes in 2008 created social upheaval in many countries and the overwhelming response - a welcomed return to investment in agriculture - was overshadowed by a worrying return to protectionism.
Under the mantra of ''self-sufficiency'', countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines became determined to bolster their production and eliminate the need for imports. That was in response to rice export bans imposed by Vietnam and Thailand.
For years, the European Union poured massive subsidies into its rural industries, in a cynical vote-winning ploy to achieve the goal of unity. That created huge stockpiles of grain, butter and wine, and put efficient farmers in other countries out of business.
The United Nations is fearful that the storm clouds surrounding global food production, which abated briefly last year, are gathering once again.
It is a storm that will require the same kind of commitment from governments at a global level as they applied to that other, less important, GFC if permanent solutions are to be found.
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