What people don't seem to understand is how long inflation takes to ripple through the agricultural industry. Conventional food production is energy intensive. Fuel prices contribute to fertilizer prices which contribute to grain prices which impact conventional meat prices. Add in the fact many producers try to secure input prices a year ahead of time, further kicking inflation down the road. High quality grass fed producers have greater resilience to these pressures as the price of hay is likely the biggest impact, which is readily planned for during "good hay making years." (Another example of delaying inflation in agriculture.) Inflation hits the lowest quality food production the hardest because they're already in competition to be the cheapest producer. As a result, fast food is a great gauge on real inflation rates. I haven't even touched on the impacts that the drought can and is having on agricultural prices. Cattle markets are at all time highs. As parts of the country come out of drought demand is increasing for female livestock to start recovering from selling off during the drought years (national cattle numbers are fairly low). Coupled with stronger demand for beef the cattle market is expected to experience a super cycle. It isn't unreasonable to be securing beef for your family now for the next 1-2 years from your LOCAL Bitcoin farmer/rancher. And if you don't have one, orange pill one. Regenerative ag and Bitcoin were made for each other. Rehypothecation isn't just a gold and bank vault issue. It's happening in cattle markets too. Get eyes on your beef while it's on the hoof.

Replies (8)

frphank's avatar
frphank 1 year ago
Introduce demurrage to combat inflation.
JuAnHu's avatar
JuAnHu 1 year ago
I agree that food prices are a good indicator. On the other hand, there have been tremendous technical advancements decreasing the food production costs during the past years and decades. Thus, looking only at food prices underestimates the real inflation, which is much higher. Unfortunately, the contributors to these efficiency increases are often not really acknowledged because their contribution is eaten up by inflation. In the public perception the food prices just keep on increasing and the producers are being blamed. One of the distortions from fiat money...
The advancements in the ag sector are butting up against physical limitations of productivity per unit of sunlight. Monoculture grain production has been essentially maxed out for decades planting "fence row to fence row" since the Earl Butz days of the USDA. Most improvements have actually been in the realm of labor efficiency, which further kills rural communities already destroyed by big ag policies. These costs have transitioned from being labor costs to technological and machinery expenses.
Allow me to complain again about how USDA subsidizes USA 🇺🇸 farming & They like to say they are “feeding the world”