The cost of feeding the world is the most expensive it’s been in years.
The FAO’s food price index, which tracks a basket of grains, vegetable oils, meat, dairy and sugar, rose to its highest level in a decade in May bloom.bg/3xRPgZa
On the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the prices of some commodities have soared including:
Even the price of moving food around the world is surging bloom.bg/3xRPgZa
Food prices have always been cyclical, but there’s reason to believe the current disruptions won’t disappear immediately as the world returns to pre-pandemic norms.
Cooking oil: Indians, who have for millennia fried their samosas, parathas and dosas, are also the world’s largest importer of liquid vegetable fat.
The unhealthy dependence has come to bite over the past year bloom.bg/3xRPgZa
Indigenous cooking mediums — mustard, groundnut, sesame and coconut oil — have all seen dramatic price increases following a 44% surge in their mostly imported substitutes:.
Reasons for skyrocketing prices range from food crops’ competing use in biofuels to floods in Malaysia, dry weather in Brazil and port-worker strikes in Argentina.
They’re threatening India with a second year of nutrition crisis bloom.bg/3xRPgZa
Corn: The price of food isn’t just determined by what you put on your plate.
Only about a quarter of U.S. corn gets turned into tacos, breakfast cereals, sweetcorn and popcorn. Some 40% is turned into ethanol, and another third is used for animal feed bloom.bg/3xRPgZa
Corn futures were at an eight-year high in May as booming demand for gasoline and animal feed, especially in China, crashed into droughts.
Brazil has been gripped by its worst drought in nearly a century, reducing crop forecasts by about 11 million tons bloom.bg/3xRPgZa
Dairy: New Zealand’s weekly whole milk powder auctions, a benchmark for the worldwide industry, peaked at $4,364 a metric ton in March, their highest level since 2014.
As in so many commodity markets, the reason is China bloom.bg/3xRPgZa
Rising incomes in China mean surging sales for products from cakes to bubble tea.
Such products are the most important driver of dairy demand. Even the U.S. consumes no more than about one-seventh of its dairy as liquid milk bloom.bg/3xRPgZa
Pork: Last July, the price of pork in China surged 85.7% from a year earlier, helping to drive the overall inflation rate up 2.7%.
The most significant cause was an outbreak of African Swine Fever that wiped out as much as 60% of the country's hog herd bloom.bg/3xRPgZa
For decades, pork has had an outsize influence on Chinese dinner tables and politics.
Middle-class anxieties triggered by Chinese food inflation can slowly erode the credibility enjoyed by a government that's long delivered economically bloom.bg/3xRPgZa
Hunger: The cost of food imports, which feed four-fifths of the world, is expected to rise to $1.7 trillion this year.
The bill for emerging economies will jump by more than a fifth, compared to a 6% increase for wealthier countries bloom.bg/3xRPgZa
At least 155 million people faced acute hunger last year — 20 million more than in 2019.
People do not just riot about food, and the starving rarely do so at all. But they do rise up against injustice that hampers their right to affordable nutrition bloom.bg/3xRPgZa
The human capital of developing nations has been battered.
Children have been kept out of school, with no credible online replacement. Add on the cost of malnutrition and you get weaker cognitive development and earning potential follow bloom.bg/3xRPgZa
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As expected, that has created inflation 12 months on as the economy reopens and rebounds. Now the market seems to believe that a resurgence of the pandemic will rein in inflation before it grows out of control megaphone.link/HSW4074133197
Either market players remain confident that the Federal Reserve can keep rising prices under control…
OR
They’re worried the economy won’t keep growing fast enough to push inflation numbers higher trib.al/Em3NLWC
Restrictions in Sydney have tightened — but cases keep rising. The outbreak that resulted has now infected more than 1,000 people.
While many parts of the world are emerging from a year of restrictions, Sydney is entering its winter of discontent trib.al/ShqKIK4
Australia's failure to heed warnings before it gets too late bodes poorly for the ability to navigate other complex global crises in the coming years, writes @davidfickling
By Tuesday, two of the Earth’s wealthiest individuals will have flown into space.
🚀 Richard Branson has already been on July 11 aboard a Virgin Galactic spaceship
🚀 Jeff Bezos’s rocket trip with Blue Origin is on Tuesday trib.al/6oESsn5
It’s taken a couple of decades for both men to realize their ambition of going into space: Blue Origin was founded in 2000 and Virgin Galactic four years later trib.al/6oESsn5
Critics will say that they could have devoted their time and money toward more worthy terrestrial endeavors (and paying more tax).
Hopefully seeing Earth’s majestic curvature inspires better care of this planet trib.al/6oESsn5
“Living” with Covid-19 has been talked about since the pandemic first began.
This so-called “endemic” phase would see Covid-19 look more like influenza, with regular vaccine campaigns and a focus on primary care. Not eradicated, but managed trib.al/2ZghWvM
🇫🇷Paris is swarming once again with workers
😷Masks are dangling from wrists rather than noses
🎶Nightclubs are back open
It’s becoming clear that living with Covid will remain an elusive goal without a renewed boost to pandemic management trib.al/2ZghWvM
The reopening of Europe’s major economies is starting to hit a speed bump as cases rebound. Hospitalizations are on the rise in:
🇪🇸📈 Spain
🇫🇷📈 France
The more contagious delta variant is ripping through the continent trib.al/2ZghWvM
As someone who has spent decades thinking about money – saving it, investing it and spending it – @ritholtz has come to recognize several fundamental financial truths.
Luckily for you, he’s willing to share them: trib.al/cbCJdBt
Investing is both simple and hard: The basic premise behind successful investing is easily understood: “Invest for the long term, be diversified, watch your costs and let compounding work its magic.”
Not least, the value of fresh air. Better ventilation in workplaces, gathering spaces and other public buildings should be a post-Covid priority trib.al/r3TTvqC
Schools, offices and other indoor spaces need better ventilation in order to minimize the harm from:
🦠New coronaviruses
🦠Cold and flu viruses
🦠Every other sort of airborne pathogen trib.al/r3TTvqC
Covid calls for rethinking the way indoor air is controlled.
✅New guidance on safer ventilation in schools is urgent
✅State and local building codes should also be revised
✅Effective ventilation, which often requires more energy, can't be ignored twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…