The war disruption of Ukraine wheat crops, a major world source; the starvation of Gaza refugees, the free food to ten million illegal US immigrants, combined with weird climate changes affecting farmland yields, these factors are pushing up food prices.
The rise in the price of gold is predictive. See chart below.
Soylent Green, Anyone?
Or would you prefer chocolate-coated red worms with green grasshopper garnishes? Pricey delicacies in avantgarde French eateries, coming to your neighborhood restaurants soon. Nature’s abundance.
Chả rươi (sand worm omelette) is a Vietnamese dish made from the polychaete worm Tylorrhynchus heterochetus; it is a delicacy of some provinces in Northern Vietnam. The dish is prepared from live sand worms, which are put in hot water to remove their tentacles, and then mixed with raw egg.
Chart In Focus More Food Inflation Is Coming  |
| March 22, 2024 Inflation numbers of all sorts have calmed down since the wild days of Covid shutdowns messing up the supply chains. But inflation numbers for at least the food category are about to see another surge upward. That is the message of this week’s chart, which shows how the movements of gold prices tend to get echoed about a year later in the prices of wheat futures. This principle also works for corn prices (not shown). Because grains are an important input into lots of finished products for food, including meat, a rise in grain prices generally is going to lead to rising food prices. Gold prices bottomed on a monthly basis in October 2022, and have been rising strongly since then. And wheat prices bottomed almost a year later, in September 2023, starting to rise on gold schedule. But just recently wheat prices have fallen just a little bit, taking them off of gold’s script. I expect wheat prices generally to get back on track again and start rising for at least the next 12 months, following in gold’s footsteps. This relationship occasionally goes off track in a much bigger way, when a weird exogenous event puts a thumb on the scale. Covid is a great example. The 2008 commodities bubble is another, when all of Wall Street suddenly went mad for commodities indexing (because stocks no longer worked in 2008). Outside of conditions like that, this is a pretty durable relationship. And the 12 month leading indication for food prices generally also works with gold, as seen in this next chart. Editor, The McClellan Market Report www.mcoscillator.com |
THE TRIQUETRA OF LIFE: Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness 
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