Fatten up your portfolio while helping 1.02 billion starving people.

We're getting ever closer to Thanksgiving - the US feast day that's been usurped from a time of giving thanks and offering help to those less fortunate, to becoming a glorification of gluttony.

While many in the US will be sitting down to fabulous  spreads including organic turkeys, heirloom fruits and vegetables and artisanal cheeses - all acquired at the trendiest foodie shops and haunts - more than a billion folks living in the US and elsewhere around the globe will be thankful for just a morsel of anything to sustain themselves and their families.

These folks aren't concerned over whether a bag of flour was ground using non-pesticide and herbicide grains from select farms - as they'd just like a bag of flour.

The same goes for their rice, cornmeal, beans and perhaps - just maybe - a bit of animal flesh, even if it was fattened up with  laboratory-engineered feedstock.

Now, I'm one of those fat bastards who loves food. And love might even be an understatement, as those that I've dined with at various dinner parties around the world will attest. And for those that haven't yet met me - just take a look at one of my promotional photos and you'll see that I'm not more than a pound or two away from being perfect for casting of Falstaff.

And I expend quite a bit of effort to learn of the best foods being harvested, produced and prepared, and believe that the best-tasting fish, flesh and produce comes from those who work to minimize technological and genetic meddling in what God did his best to create.

But I am also pragmatic enough to understand that it isn't merely culinary quality that the world needs and wants - it also needs more quantity of food. And for those who continue to scream until they've turned a lovely shade of purple over the need to stop the engineering of crops and other food stuffs - I join the CEO of Nestle (NSRGF), Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, in calling them out as well-fed activists that are exacerbating the world's food shortages.

In other words - there's plenty of capacity in the world's food markets for both the finest genuinely organic artisanal foods as well as the finest of engineered products.

Food Charity and Food Investment

In the past few days over in Milan, the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has been running a forum on the need for greater investment in food - including developing and deploying newer technologies to help to expand global food production.

The FAO's tracking of the demand for food over the past two years reveals a startling and deeply troubling fact: the globe's hungry have surged in number by a multiple of over 10 times, from 100 million to an estimated 1.02 billion. That's big, as the globe's overall population is currently running just a few head shy of 6.7 billion - which means that nearly 1 in 6 of the world's inhabitants are hungry for food.

Now, one might ask, how can charity work to help feed the hungry equate to market performance for portfolios?

As crass as that might have just read - the FAO has the answer. Direct foreign investment (FDI) focused just on food and agricultural production has soared over 300 percent in just the past seven tracked and reported years. Yet, this major build up of investment dollars is just seed capital: The FAO says that the world needs to expand that amount over 1,400 percent just to begin to address supply and demand inequalities in the markets.

And the heads of the big ag tech companies as well as food producers are right in step with the FAO. Over luscious dishes of Milanese cuisine, corporate chieftains made their call for the world to further embrace GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) technology for expanding food markets. Because as the head of Jain Irrigation Anil Jain stated, it's not charity, it's business.

Rather than just sending bags of charity rice or cornmeal, the world's investors should also be putting funds to work on increasing the capabilities of food production.

And those anti-GMO tech, limousine-riding foodies might do better to embrace better living through chemistry, rather than just wail against it.

Wanted: Higher Agricultural Yields

From an investor standpoint, food prices keep riding ever higher as evidenced by the FAO global food index, which has consistently outpaced US domestic consumer prices (CPI) by a multiple of nearly 300 percent over just the past decade alone.

And with environmental challenges, including ever-scarcer water - giving farmers better tools to work with makes ever more economic and market sense.

The US president is spending quality time visiting one of the world's biggest markets for food production and consumption - China. And this nation is acutely aware of its agricultural needs - including water, which remains one of the nation's most vital and increasingly scarce resources. And while China is spending vast sums to clean up water supplies, as well as even deploying its Weather Ministry's rain and snow making technologies to enhance fresh water production - there's still plenty of need.

And it's not just China - as those farmers in inland California are quickly learning - as skyrocketing water consumption worldwide is drying up what were ample sources of food production.

So, from drought-tolerant seeds to high-performance crops better able to resist pests of both plant and insect variety - the market for GMO products is growing by leaps and bounds and continues to be a perfect menu choice for your portfolio.

2 Core Food Investments

There are two core holdings that you need to own to make the agricultural investment harvest for your retirement portfolio truly bountiful.

The first is Bayer (BAYZF), which I've been following and recommending from my past days going back to 2003 as editor of Personal Finance, as well as in my current Stocks That Pay You. Since then - the stock of this major ag tech and pharmaceutical company has delivered a return in excess of 328 percent - and it's far from done.

Far from just its signature aspirin, the company's ag production and protection products - along with the rest of its core mix - continues to pile on the revenue gains year in and year out, even in the recessions, booms and busts of the past many years.

And note that while this is primarily a growth company, it adheres to my edict of stocks that pay you to own them: At its current price Bayer gives you a dividend just shy of 3 percent - which comes home to your brokerage account in euros - meaning that you get protection against dollar woes to boot.

The second company is my hometown favorite - Saint Louis-based Monsanto (MON). The prime target of anti-GMO foodies, it nevertheless keeps rolling out what the world needs in seeds and support products to make even the most challenged farms produce more.

Again - going back over the years since I first began to recommend this one - the company has delivered returns in excess of 623 percent. And while other pundits might pound on it as it continues to hone its focus on GMO products - use any down days or weeks to buy and add to your holdings of the world's foremost GMO seed producer that does pay its shareholders a small dividend, even if a bit less than Bayer.