Mines & money, sex, babies and commodities

"Sex, babies and commodities" was Frank Holmes' rather lurid title to his presentation at the Mines & Money conference yesterday.

The industry has been through a torrid time for the past three years. But Holmes, chief executive and chief investment officer of US Global Investors, believes there are reasons to keep the faith with commodities. For example, India has 600 million people under 25 years old - that's twice the population of the United States. There's a baby born every three seconds.

Our picture, which shows a slide from his presentation, shows the huge amount of commodities consumed by a single American over his lifetime. Population growth alone goes a long way to sustaining the mining sector. With about 1.2 billion people hooked up through Facebook and millions more on the internet, people have greater expectations for their children and families. People want better education, cars, clean environment and so on, all of which leads to greater demand for commodities.