Are the Chinese coming?

That’s the important question now being asked in Saskatchewan, a prairie province in Canada. It is also the question of the moment on Wall Street.

Saskatchewan is home base for the Potash Corporation, the fertilizer company. If you care at all about the future of the world’s food supply, you care — whether you know it or not — about Saskatchewan.

A consortium of state-backed Chinese companies and financiers may make a takeover offer for Potash that rivals a $38.6 billion hostile bid from BHP Billiton, and that prospect has lawmakers in Washington, regulators in Canada and bankers on Wall Street all talking.

The politically charged subtext is this: Do we really want the Chinese to control the company that has the largest capacity to produce fertilizer?