[HN Gopher] One-quarter of the world's pigs died in a year due t...
___________________________________________________________________
One-quarter of the world's pigs died in a year due to swine fever
in China
Author : vo2maxer
Score : 182 points
Date : 2020-01-02 03:41 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| neonate wrote:
| http://archive.md/ItaXn
| amelius wrote:
| Criminals were using drones to make the fever spread faster, see:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21891968
| jandrese wrote:
| That story is pretty hard to believe. It might be true, but it
| reads like so much scaremongering and blame deflection.
| swayvil wrote:
| This makes me wonder, who's factory pig-farms are more hellish?
| China's or USA's?
|
| You might think that China's notorious inhumanity gives their
| factory farms a leg-up. But there might be hellishness-ceiling
| that Chinese and USAian factory farms both meet.
| scrumbledober wrote:
| a week or two ago my Safeway was selling pork shoulders for
| $0.99/lb. Tuesday I went back and they had whole cooked hams for
| $0.99/lb. I have been wondering why pork has been so cheap and to
| see that there is such a global shortage seems counterintuitive.
| Perhaps domestic farmers have increased production with China
| importing more pork, leaving a domestic supply surplus?
| jessaustin wrote:
| In addition to sibling's seasonal observations, China have had
| a bunch of on-again/off-again pork tariffs through much of
| 2019. If a pig is big enough to slaughter, it has to go
| somewhere. If it can't go to China, it will sell more cheaply
| elsewhere. In the longer term, pork will probably get more
| expensive.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| In my experience ham and premium meats consistently go on-sale
| for the holiday season. I'm guessing the roasts serve as a
| loss-leader so that people buy the rest of the ingredients for
| the family feast at the supermarket.
| digitalsushi wrote:
| Well, as someone built very similarly to a pig, that is
| distressing news.
|
| This is why I don't save 100% of my money for retirement. It's
| good to live while being alive.
| tempsy wrote:
| what?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| GP probably refers to their body shape, and references people
| who save every dime they can while working and then not
| living long enough to actually have enjoyed life or
| retirement.
| ves wrote:
| I'd assume gp was referring to the fact that humans and
| pigs are genetically very similar and not that gp is out of
| shape or something.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| _Are_ humans susceptible to this particular illness? Or are you
| merely fearing the worst?
| hpoe wrote:
| I find this so interesting. Oftentimes we talk about wars, and
| treaties, politicians and warlords as though most of the fate of
| the world depended upon them. Yet this single outbreak of a
| disease will probably do just as much or more damage to China
| than the trade war.
|
| Now sure there are things that can be done and leaders are
| leaders precisely because they are halp to organize and deal with
| problems at a large scale like this, but there is so much that is
| still out of our control as humans.
|
| It is humbling to think how vunerable we still are to mother
| nature despite all of our progrsss. Maybe that is something we
| should keep in mind more, how fragile and dependent we still are
| as people, nations and humanity.
| gowld wrote:
| This really only affects people who are obsessed with pig meat,
| which is a non-essential luxury.
| unglaublich wrote:
| This is a very subjective statement.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!
| nabla9 wrote:
| The loss of pigs in China affected heavily soy exports from the
| US, so it kind of became part of the trade war hurting US
| farmers.
| flatfilefan wrote:
| They say the low protein content of recent US soybeans was
| what affected their sales even earlier. I wonder in which
| relation these events stay to each other if at all.
| mikedilger wrote:
| One-quarter doesn't sound like much to me as a sheep farmer. Our
| herds double-to-triple every year, and then get cut way back
| again as we turn the lambs into meat. Pigs have even more
| offspring: 5-6 piglets per litter, 1.5 litters per year, and can
| have their first litter at 8 months. "One-quarter of the pigs"
| should be replacable in less than a year, a minor temporary
| supply shortage for the meat market.
|
| EDIT: I don't disupte any of the facts of the article, and my use
| of the world "minor" is from the presumption that people might
| infer that this is a long-term problem, rather than an acute and
| quickly rectifiable one which seems "minor" in comparison to a
| long-term one.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Problems being that the disease is still going and not under
| control.
|
| Also whole herds are being culled, producers would have to buy
| not just breed and some are switching to other livestock.
| mikedilger wrote:
| I don't dispute any of that. I only wanted to head off a
| possible misconception that the headline might have lead
| people to believe that losing "one quarter" was going to be
| hard to recover from. It's definitely bad, but also easy and
| quick to recover from.
| ajb wrote:
| Wow. I guess that's why China has a Strategic Pork Reserve[1]. I
| thought the Pork Reserve was funny the first time i heard about
| it, but it's not so much now.
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/id/100795405
| baybal2 wrote:
| A nice conclusion for the year of the pig :/
| Iwan-Zotow wrote:
| some swinocide
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I read things like this and wonder what will move the tipping
| point to plant-derived sources of essential amino acids (thus
| protein) adequately to stop farming animals.
| inetknght wrote:
| Plants can also become ill.
| geddy wrote:
| ...from contact with contaminated water, which is
| contaminated with things like animal shit, from farms.
|
| Plants don't just get horrendous diseases - nearly all of
| these outbreaks can be traced back to animal agriculture in
| close proximity.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Poorly managed plant diseases are just as prevalent and often
| even harder to control and eradicate.
|
| Animal agriculture won't stop.
|
| This disease process eliminates bad management and corrupt
| inefficient government.
| geddy wrote:
| Plant diseases are typically caused directly by animal
| agriculture operations. E.Coli and salmonella are two big
| ones that were on salad greens recently. Guess what - they
| didn't originate from the plants.
|
| Manure, contaminated water, runoff - all contributing factors
| to "plant diseases", all issues from raising animals for
| food.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Are plant diseases less communicable to humans (and animals
| in general) ?
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| You're correct. Pigs are very similar to humans
| anatomically, and biochemically mammals share a LOT of
| genetics, so its much easier for mutations to lead to
| species hopping pathogens. This is one reason why Eurasian
| cultures dominated historically speaking: they'd lived with
| livestock for much longer and evolution crafted those human
| populations to have numerous immunities that isolated, non
| livestock holding communities didnt have.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Put in another way or with another interpretation: the
| arms race between disease and immune system in the
| animal-human-disease relationship led to very powerful
| diseases which the humans carried in their populations
| but were not largely affected by.
|
| When the Europeans started crossing oceans to contact
| very different civilizations they brought the diseases
| which themselves committed genocide because the new
| populations hadn't had the same difficulty or
| interactions with animals and diseases.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I don't know if this is a good faith question or not. But
| of course the concern isn't people getting diseases from
| plants.
|
| Crop yields go down and in some cases the resulting grain
| becomes poisonous to people or animals which can in some
| cases cause disease (fungal most often).
| moosey wrote:
| Any industrial scale animal agriculture has as an input
| industrial scale plant production. For example, most of the
| plant matter produced for consumption in the US goes not to
| humans, but to animal agriculture instead.
|
| Any issues in plant agricultural production will be felt many
| times over in prices for meat (either via subsidy or at the
| counter) than in prices for plants.
| dirtyid wrote:
| China has rich tradition of vegetarian cuisine due to Buddhism
| but pork is still a significant cuisine staple. China is
| already nominally food secure i.e. it can feed everyone on
| domestic production but absolute food security is a huge focus
| for central planners and from what I've gleaned, the goal is
| still to provide enough domestic animal production vs pivot to
| plant proteins. Although Chinese fake meat research is also
| trending. At the end of the day it's cultural, I think long
| term it would be easy to encourage more vegetarian diets in
| China because vegetarian Buddhist diets is associated with
| health and Chinese demographics is skewing older for the
| foreseeable future. Combined with lack of comprehensive health
| safety net and people will eventually skew towards less animal
| protein.
| jankotek wrote:
| Clickbaitish title, most pigs are slaughtered before reaching one
| year of age.
| userbinator wrote:
| These pigs died before they could be eaten.
| megablast wrote:
| Hopefully that always happens.
|
| Are you saying that these pigs are not used for food?
| gruez wrote:
| That's a very uncharitable way of interpreting the headline.
| From the article body: "the epidemic there alone has killed
| nearly one-quarter of all the world's pigs".
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Funny to see this finally making mainstream news and the front
| page of HN. I worked as a research analyst at a long/short
| equities fund and one of the biggest bets we placed was based on
| ASF. The sell side was completely complacent about this, but we
| were tracking the disease closely and the math was undeniable -
| this was going to be a major, major disruption in global protein
| markets.
|
| Bullets of the thesis were:
|
| - African Swine Fever in China is putting half the global supply
| of hogs at risk.
|
| - It will take years for China to get a handle on the disease.
|
| - This will cause prices of pork in China to rise. China will
| have to import pork to fill the hole in order to avoid a
| political crisis.
|
| - As a result, global proteins will enter a multi-year up-cycle.
| All proteins (beef, chicken, pork) will benefit.
|
| This structural thesis could be played many, many ways.
| dman wrote:
| Any examples of how a retail investor would play this?
| mc3 wrote:
| Probably too hard to analyze. How do you know what the demand
| for meat is like? Will people just switch to other foods if
| it becomes too expensive? If pork is costing me $50/kg, maybe
| I start eating potatoes and nuts? Maybe other factors force
| the price down anyway. I don't know - I wouldn't.
|
| Just buy shares that are good for the long term.
| davidw wrote:
| Buy an index fund.
|
| Do you think you can compete with that big investment outfit
| that has people working on this stuff full time?
| bluGill wrote:
| Sure I can compete. I don't have so much money under my
| control that my act of buying/selling changes the market.
| Thus I can afford to make trades that are worth a lot of
| money on my scale, but not worth it for the big guys
| because compared to the total amount they must work with
| means they don't have the time.
|
| Note I said can. Reading the 10k and 8q and other such
| forms to find those opportunities is boring. I get paid
| very well to write software instead and just let an index
| fund grow my money. I can't live off my investments yet,
| but when they grow enough I'll be able to [substitute any
| of a number of hobbies I might get interested in], and it
| won't be a full time job moving money around.
| davidw wrote:
| "not worth it for the big guys"
|
| Sounds like a legit strategy, but it also sounds like
| part of it is actively _not competing_ with them.
| tomrod wrote:
| Differentiated market.
| toohotatopic wrote:
| Aren't we already in an index fund bubble? How can the
| stock market stomach all of that liquidity? Don't the share
| prices go up beyond the value of the companies?
| pm90 wrote:
| There is a large amount of wealth invested in index funds
| but that doesn't mean it's a bubble. By its definition
| index funds are amortizing their investments to mitigate
| risk, this is opposite of a bubble.
| ves wrote:
| You absolutely can, because you have much less capital to
| deploy and no strings attached. The sorts of opportunities
| you're looking for and they're looking for can be totally
| disjoint. Some friends and I made a bit of easy money in
| college on very good derivatives trades that only existed
| at tiny volumes (low thousands).
|
| There's lots of good reasons to invest passively but being
| unable to compete with big funds isn't necessarily one of
| them.
| davidw wrote:
| "Quarter of the world's supply..."
|
| doesn't sound like the world of "tiny volumes", but
| something that moves pretty big markets, which is hardly
| an under-the-radar trade.
| tempsy wrote:
| everyone says this but so long as you aren't day trading
| this is mostly untrue
|
| buying individual stocks is not akin to gambling.
| et2o wrote:
| A substantial amount of evidence disagrees with you.
| Active traders (day traders or not) almost always
| underperform the market in the long run.
| tempsy wrote:
| ok. underperforming does not mean "gambling".
|
| i buy what i personally like and use and have made
| substantially more than the market on Apple, Amazon,
| Starbucks, PayPal, etc. am I a professional equity
| analyst? no. but is this "gambling"? I don't think so.
| et2o wrote:
| Tech has done very well the past few years. In the long
| run, who knows.
|
| Gambling is taking on excess risk for excess profit,
| especially when the odds are against you (expected value
| is negative). This could be poker or active trading. It's
| gambling.
| tempsy wrote:
| Buy and hold long term is not active trading. You're
| conflating two completely different things.
|
| It's odd when I find HN to be so risk adverse when
| working in tech is all about risk. Fortunes are made with
| risk. Then as an industry we're apparently all just
| degenerate gamblers if buying and holding Apple stock is
| akin to playing roulette.
| et2o wrote:
| Yes, that is the definition of active trading. I suggest
| you do more research. Active trading is contrasted to
| passive trading (index funds).
|
| It's akin to roulette in that it's statistically non-
| optimal, not that the level of risk is the same.
|
| HN readers tend to be focused upon evidence and
| mathematically inclined.
| tempsy wrote:
| If that were true literally no HN reader would work at a
| startup, but we know that isn't the case. Or take any
| compensation in the form of equity in one company, even
| at a large one.
| greglindahl wrote:
| That doesn't follow at all. I work at a tech startup
| because it's a business in which I think I can add value.
| I don't think I know enough about finance to move the
| needle.
|
| As for big-company equity, I'm happy to take RSUs in a
| FAANG , and sell them the day they arrive. Nothing
| radical there.
| pm90 wrote:
| That would be true iff compensation were the only reason
| for joining startups.
| RussianCow wrote:
| First of all, financially and statistically speaking,
| working at a startup almost never makes sense compared to
| working at a FAANG or similarly high-paying company.
| (There have been countless articles and discussions about
| this on HN, so I won't rehash the arguments.) Second,
| there are other reasons for working at a startup that
| have little or nothing to do with money (it's more
| fun/rewarding, you learn more, work/life balance, etc).
| The latter doesn't really have a parallel in investing
| unless you only invest in sustainable/ethical companies
| or something like that, but then the conversation about
| maximizing profit and beating the market is kind of moot
| anyway.
|
| > Or take any compensation in the form of equity in one
| company, even at a large one.
|
| Public stocks are liquid enough that you can sell them as
| soon as possible and immediately "cash out", so any
| equity-based compensation at a public company can
| reasonably be treated as cash. The same applies to a
| private VC-backed company with an upcoming IPO, though
| obviously there is a little bit more risk involved there.
| astura wrote:
| Working in tech is not "all about risk"; being a
| founder/entrepreneur is in any industry, but just an
| average employee that writes code is hardly risky.
| RussianCow wrote:
| > but is this "gambling"? I don't think so.
|
| Of course it is, because you can't predict the future.
| You could have just as easily lost money investing in
| individual stocks, even ones that seemed like no-brainers
| at the time. Why do you think you're better than most
| other investors at making those investment choices?
| tempsy wrote:
| Life isn't risk free. Just because you can't predict
| something doesn't mean it's inherently gambling.
|
| But if that is your definition of gambling then every
| human gambles every single day just by living.
|
| Personally I don't think minimizing risk as far as I can
| is a particularly enlightened or interesting way to live
| ones life, but to each their own.
|
| Certainly this past decade rewarded risk takers.
| et2o wrote:
| Best to compare it to a known and easily accessible
| baseline such as index funds / passive investing. You are
| gambling relative to passive investing, in that you hope
| for higher returns but statistically you will achieve
| lower returns. Not that complicated.
| tempsy wrote:
| To each their own. Clearly I have a higher risk tolerance
| than you, and over the last decade it's paid off
| handsomely.
| mikestew wrote:
| _Why do you think you 're better than most other
| investors at making those investment choices?_
|
| Not OP, but the simple answer is: "because my returns
| over the years prove that I can." I've heard this
| question enough times over the years that I usually just
| ignore such silly questions and go back to buying deep-
| in-the-money AAPL calls. Conversely, if it makes one feel
| better, continue to tell yourself individuals can't beat
| the market (which is mostly true).
| shadow-banned wrote:
| 2x
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Buy TSN, SAFM, HRL...but it's probably too late at this
| point. We were placing bets on this 18 months ago.
| dman wrote:
| Fair enough - thanks for the pointers.
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| HOGS
|
| Wisdomtree ETF which tries to track US hog futures prices
| (with some drag)
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Not to be confused with HOG which is Harley-Davidson haha
| skidd0 wrote:
| I have a few questions about the kind of work you do.
| Mostly just about how you got started and what sort of
| activities you perform. If you have the time, could you
| please contact me at skidd0 [at] skidd0 [dot] com?
| bluejay2 wrote:
| One way would be to buy protein producers (e.g. Tyson) . The
| hard part is figuring out how much of the expected benefit is
| already factored into current stock prices though. As another
| user mentioned, this is not exactly breaking news to the
| investment community. Tyson for example was up 72% in 2019
| (vs 32% for the SP500 and 27% for an index of consumer
| staples companies, of which Tyson is one)
| mikorym wrote:
| The irony is that an increase in stock price is _supposed_
| to reflect future value (of dividends).
|
| In this case, the 72% does not accurately reflect the
| increase in value, unless they almost double their dividend
| for quite a few years after the whole Chinese pork fiasco.
|
| Market effect are exaggerated by investors and speculators.
| (Read: amplified, not fabricated [usually].)
| nradov wrote:
| Why should we believe that you're right and the rest of
| the market is wrong?
| greglindahl wrote:
| Isn't Tyson a net protein destroyer? They take a larger
| amount of plant protein and turn it into a smaller amount
| of animal protein.
| evgen wrote:
| While in this case protein is just generic for 'meat', in
| the specific cast Tyson is taking plant protein that you
| or I cannot consume and turning it into a protein that we
| can eat. Does an oil refinery destroy oil? Well, I guess
| so, but that is not exactly the term that is commonly
| used to describe the refining process.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| That's exactly right.
| ww520 wrote:
| I've bought and maintained holding on LW, which is in the
| worldwide market of potato products (french fries, etc).
| Reason being people would be looking for fat substitute when
| meat price goes up. Restaurants will increase their fries
| portion to account for the decreasing meat portion.
|
| The trend toward plant based food also helps.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Interesting thesis! We looked at the name, but never had
| that thesis. Maybe same could be said for CVGW (the avocado
| guys)?
| pg_is_a_butt wrote:
| How long did it take the scientist at your firm to synthesis
| the disease and spread it around?
|
| You are monsters.
| milofeynman wrote:
| As someone not in the financial world, this is one of the few
| times equities research has mad sense to me. It's still a bet
| but having that kind of research to bet off of is really
| interesting. Another time was that article about measuring the
| shadows of tankers carrying oil outside of port.
|
| I appreciate the insight.
| kickout wrote:
| This would be incredibly bearish for soybean futures, no? (or
| at least Brazlian ones, as the US tariffs have already cratered
| Chinese soy imports)
| xwowsersx wrote:
| You mean because it would reduce demand for feed? I think
| that's right. As far as I can remember, China has to wait
| until ASF is completely eradicated before beginning to
| rebuild the herd so it's not like the lost demand from the
| diseased hogs is being replaced by the new herd. Also,
| piglets probably require less feed than the mature ones.
| kickout wrote:
| Yea, that's the logic. Not place for all the world's
| soybean based protein to go (most of it goes to pigs and
| chickens). Which is surprising because soybeans are way up
| in the past month (people hoping for tariff relief). Other
| shoe waiting to drop, lol.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Would you mind explaining how tariffs interact with
| futures prices? Naively I would think that tariff relief
| -> more and cheaper imports -> lower price. What am I
| missing?
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Counterpoint would be that production of other proteins (beef
| and chicken) would increase to make up for the lost
| production of pork, but the arguments against that are
|
| 1. Have to look at how much feed those require vs pigs
| (clearly chickens require way less) and
|
| 2. Pork is a cultural thing in China. There's some
| substitution, but to an extent they will simply eat less
| protein in absolute terms.
|
| These were the kinds of things we thought a lot about. Had to
| think through this very carefully.
| konschubert wrote:
| Why do you call ,,meat" ,,protein"?
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Just habit. Beef, chicken and pork are collectively
| referred to as "proteins" within the investment
| community/people who follow Ag and Food companies.
| tptacek wrote:
| That's what restaurants (behind the scenes) call them,
| too.
| im3w1l wrote:
| I've seen them mentioned on menus under a "Proteins"
| heading in the context of a customizable meal.
| [deleted]
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > - As a result, global proteins will enter a multi-year up-
| cycle. All proteins (beef, chicken, pork) will benefit.
|
| I am not _so_ optimistic. Climate change discussions, a couple
| notable exceptions (Trump, Bolsonaro, Morrison) aside,
| generally has recognized that animal protein and the efforts
| required to create it (deforestation for growing food, over-
| nitration due to feces used as fertilizer) are no longer
| sustainable. I can very well imagine massive bans or quotas as
| a result, the Dutch government is actually forced to do
| something to reduce their CO2 contributions by their Supreme
| Court.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Don't base your investments on wishful thinking.
| moosey wrote:
| All of your suggestions will also cause the prices of animal-
| based foods to rise. I hope those price increases are
| substantial.
| bluejay2 wrote:
| Protein prices would likely benefit still under that
| scenario, at least in the short run, as you are talking about
| drastically limiting supply. Presumably the demand would
| still be there.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Multi-year could be just 2-5 years. You're talking a much
| longer-term structural thing. China has to deal with soaring
| pork prices. I don't think they care about environmental
| impact.
| philshem wrote:
| Are pigs still a source of pharmaceutical insulin?
|
| Edit: > Insulin can be made from the pancreas of pigs or cows.
| Human versions can be made either by modifying pig versions or
| recombinant technology.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin_(medication)
| hanniabu wrote:
| Interesting, I always thought it was a drug produced in a lab
| from other chemicals.
| lightedman wrote:
| It used to be horse-derived humulin.
| delegate wrote:
| > All proteins (beef, chicken, pork) will benefit.
|
| To paraphrase: Some people will make a profit from the mass
| slaughter of billions of living beings born and raised in
| hellish conditions.
|
| Once we abstract away the details with custom language, we can
| safely play with numbers and actually make a profit from it,
| moral implications just a distant afterthought.
|
| That being said, I'll go back to browsing around or maybe watch
| a movie; I've had protein just an hour ago, I feel full and
| satisfied.
| Havoc wrote:
| How do you place a bet on something so as you say undeniable
| though? Ie how are you in front of the priced in wave
| xwowsersx wrote:
| I don't know if you can at this point. People were complacent
| and dismissed the concerns. Sell side only started writing
| about it 6 months or more after we caught wind of it. You
| just have to be ahead of the curve. Many reasons why sell
| side was complacent, including 1) analysts, especially US-
| based ones, are very focused on leading indicators of supply
| from USDA data and 2) they don't want to think about China
| that much bc they feel it's hard to rely on the data from
| there, etc
| dahfizz wrote:
| In another comment, OP says he was betting on this 18 months
| ago. They key is to detect big events like this before they
| become undeniable common knowledge.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Exactly
| Havoc wrote:
| >They key is to detect big events like this before they
| become undeniable common knowledge.
|
| Indeed. It's quite hit miss though.e.g. I called the
| supermicro stuff right. Made money. Tried same on amd
| spectre and got burned.
|
| Each time relying on hn being ahead of the knowledge curve
| greglindahl wrote:
| Huh. I've been reading about this in the mainstream news for a
| long time.
|
| While we're here, did you leave tofu off of your proteins list?
| China is already one of the the fastest growing markets for it.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Interesting. I've never heard it in conversations about
| global proteins. I understand it's growing, but how big is
| the market currently in tons p.a.? Does it compete with the
| other proteins? Who are the major (public) players in the
| space?
| uhtred wrote:
| Beef, chicken and pork are not protein.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The price of pork is still crazy cheap.
|
| https://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=pork&month...
| xwowsersx wrote:
| I don't think you can just look at the futures, have to see
| price series for pork prices in China, e.g.
| https://www.pig333.com/markets_and_prices/china_106/
| TaylorSwift wrote:
| Do you have an alternative link for hog prices? The graph
| and prices are blocked by adblock or noscript.
|
| I'm looking at this for hog prices:
| https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lean-hogs - does
| this reflect the pork prices you are describing about?
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| What structural theses do you have on global warming, out of
| curiosity? Or anything else of interest that can be shared?
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Haven't thought about it. It's hard to find theses that have
| all the elements that makes it investable. Need 1. Something
| people don't know which 2. They will soon know which means 3.
| Things are mispriced.
|
| I don't know that the global warming story has something like
| that yet, but I'm no expert so I really don't know.
| intothev01d wrote:
| I'll add onto that and the prediction for 2020's from yesterday
| that meat may very soon begin to price itself out of the market
| with meat alternatives from Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods,
| etc being first movers in this area could be a great investment
| over the next decade
| ethbro wrote:
| Would love to hear an informed opinion on why meat
| alternatives aren't commodities.
|
| Is what the first mover brands are doing that unreproducible?
| noir_lord wrote:
| Partner works in export for a massive pork producer.
|
| From what they are saying internally this is/will continue to
| be a huge shift in the market, the Chinese importers are paying
| way more generally and even for the parts that the European
| market doesn't use directly for human consumption.
| ksec wrote:
| >Massive Pork Producer
|
| I am going to guess Danish Crown?
|
| Chinese has always been buying in qualities that exceeds any
| supply capacity. And that was before ASF, after that they try
| to contain it, as well as opening up more Brazilian Pork
| Import. While xwowsersx was genius in placing the bet 18
| months ago, the price / tonne wasn't so clear* until close to
| mid 2019 when everything went out of hand.
|
| * It wasn't clear because despite raising prices, pork prices
| ( Brazilian ) has been trading at a ridiculously low level
| since ~2015.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Profile says North of England, does Danish Crown have
| anything in Britain?
| hanniabu wrote:
| > It will take years for China to get a handle on the disease.
|
| Is this an issue with everyone? Or China in particular due to
| incompetence?
| yocheckitdawg wrote:
| China in particular due to the lack of a free media. Pork is
| an important staple in China, so politicians chose to
| suppress the bad news about the hog supply which limited the
| information available to farmers to make changes to mitigate
| the damage being wrought by ASF. If Chinese farmers had
| access to more information more quickly, the crisis would be
| nowhere near as severe as it has become.
|
| Once again another example of how Freedom of Speech is a
| foundational value of immense importance and should only be
| violated if there are extremely good reasons for doing so
| (and the vast majority of the time there are not).
| fqye wrote:
| WTF. This crisis has been openly discussed in China from
| the very beginning. And yes pork price has been going up
| steadily , but there was no such thing as political crisis.
| I mean China is not angel but it is absurd to smear China
| with nonsenses like this.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| It's a problem for China because something like 50% of their
| pork production (maybe more) comes from backyard farms which
| do not have the biotech and other safety measures in place to
| contain the disease.
| baybal2 wrote:
| FYI, imports of all proteins in China is heavily regulated
| despite the claims of opposite.
|
| Effectively, import permits are issued per-country, and can be
| withdrawn on a whim to keep agrarian lobbies on their toes in
| exporter countries. That is done through sanitary and food
| safety permits.
|
| Current sky high prices may well be because you got a
| counterintuitive reaction from permitting officials, and they
| will fall again once they will ease on imports.
|
| China been historically edgy on imports of pork, and most
| private importers specialise on beef and chicken instead.
| gowld wrote:
| Does this mean no McRib for a few years?
|
| McRib is how McDonald's plays the pork futures market.
| jandrese wrote:
| Quite possibly. Although the trade war may distort the US
| markets enough to allow McDonalds to offer it again. It's
| hard to predict with Trump is going to do with the tariffs
| and how China responds.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Two other relevant HN discussions in the past week:
|
| _Chinese criminal gangs spreading African swine fever to force
| farmers to sell pigs_
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21891495
|
| _China flight systems jammed by pig farm's African swine fever
| defences_ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21891968
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