This week a wealthy couple, acquaintances my age, decided to do a detox. They enlisted the services of a food-box company, which delivers daily, calorie controlled (he 1,800 calories, she 1,300) superfoods, with cooking instructions. Alcohol is forbidden and they have been strongly advised against caffeine. The cost: £40 per person per day. I suppose that at £560 for the week, it’s cheaper than a stay at the Mayo clinic.
This chimes with data published this month that Britons drank less alcohol in 2017 despite global consumption increasing by 70 per cent since 1990. In the UK, we reduced pure alcohol intake from 12.6 litres to 11.4 over the same period, a trend seen across Europe, with consumption increasing in emerging markets. With one in 10 British adults still looking to cut down on booze, in 2018 they spent a record £100m on non-alcoholic beer, wine and spirits – and the Virgin Mary pub opened in Dublin, which will be booze-free. The price of sugar futures in the US, an important ingredient of the beverage industry, has been in decline for almost three years, lying well below the 50-year mean regression.
This week US vegan company Impossible Foods raised $300m, valuing it at $2bn. This month, plant-based Beyond Meat Inc launched its Nasdaq IPO at the top end of its price range, again a function of a shift away from animal protein. Last Wednesday, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand trimmed its key official cash rate (OCR) by 25 basis points to a new record low (matching Australia’s) at 1.5 per cent. Bank governor Adrian Orr noted: "global trade is incredibly important to our economy". Meat, dairy, eggs, honey, fruits, nuts, beverages and cereals make up over half of all their exports. Per capita methane emissions Down Under rank in the world’s top 25, a list dominated by Gulf states. The price of live cattle futures in Chicago has been on a downward trajectory since 2014’s short squeeze, and there’s plenty of room to fall a lot further.
Rapeseed, or canola as it’s known in North America, is enjoyed for the glorious yellow fields that have grown on us. A current favourite ingredient for top chefs because of its high smoke point (254˚C), low saturated fats, omega 3 and 6, and vitamins E and K, it’s also an animal feed. Futures prices in Winnipeg have gyrated widely since 1980, from a record low C$200 to a maximum at CS745 per metric tonne. Currently trading under the very long-term mean regression, they have been drifting for the past year, probably linked to President Trump’s trade tactics; this trend could well continue until the year-end. This news will probably come as a surprise to farmers in Europe, where the banning of neonicotinoid-based pesticides, coupled with a fairly dry spring, is expected to reduce this year’s yield by up to 30 per cent.
By contrast, the price of corn futures at the Chicago Board of Trade has been incredibly steady for the last four years; they too had seen massive spikes during the speculative commodities boom in 2008 and again 2010-12. An important input in the production of poultry and pigs, one would have thought these would go down in tandem with any drop in animal husbandry. The trouble with corn is that it’s widely used as an additive in petrol.
