Our agriculture futures ETF now occupies a not-small position in our core portfolio. An article published this morning by Bloomberg titled The Country That Makes Breakfast for the World Is Plagued by Fire, Frost and Drought tells of why unpredictable weather patterns (disrupting production/sparking higher pricing) are a key part of our thesis:
“It’s a vicious cycle,” says Marcelo Seluchi, a meteorologist at Brazil’s Natural Disaster Monitoring and Alert
Center. “There is no rain because there is no humidity, and there is no humidity because there is no rain.”“Brazil hasn’t had a normal rainy season since 2010. “It’s been a very peculiar year,” he says. “Floods in
Germany and China, and there’s a very serious drought problem in
Brazil.”
“There’s also drought across the border in Argentina and in Chile, Canada, Madagascar, Mexico and Russia. The U.S. has been cleaved in two this summer: The West has been ravaged by record heat waves, forest fires and a drought so severe that, like in Brazil, giant lakes and rivers are drying up and straining hydro-electric power; the East, meanwhile, has been drenched by record-setting tropical storms and deadly floods.”