Food & Agriculture
The grains, the oilseeds, the fertilizer, the traders, the meat, and the fish, and why a system that feeds eight billion people is both remarkably efficient and remarkably fragile. It covers the crops and who grows them, the price crises of 2008, 2011, and 2022, fertilizer, the seed and trading companies, livestock and fish, land and climate, subsidies and export bans, hunger, diets, and seven regional food systems. Brought to October: USDA's October harvest estimates, the fertilizer shock from the closed Strait of Hormuz, the strikes that shut Ukraine's deep-water ports, and a strong El Niño forecast for the winter. Where the field argues, over regulating gene editing, 'greedflation', biofuel mandates, and ultra-processed food, each side makes its case before the evidence. Two worked examples: from a gas price to a bread price, and an elevator's hedge.