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Agriculture & Food

Agricultural prices are set less by how much the world grows than by where it grows it. When a handful of exporters or growing regions dominate a crop, a single drought, war or disease becomes a global supply shock, as cocoa’s 2024-2026 boom and bust showed. Wheat, cocoa, coffee, sugar and cattle are tracked here from futures markets to retail prices, along with the link between food-price spikes and social unrest.

25pieces
6in-depth analyses
15datasets

Where to start

Three reads, in order: the basics, the full mechanism, then what the data says.

01The basics Arabica vs Robusta: Why Coffee Is Two Markets, Not One Arabica and robusta are two distinct botanical species with opposite requirements, quoted on two exchanges. AnalysisRead → 02The full mechanism Cocoa’s 2024-2026 Round-Trip: Anatomy of a Record Boom-Bust and the Fragility of Concentrated Soft Markets For a limited physical imbalance, cocoa more than quadrupled to a record $12,646/t (Dec 2024) before falling roughly 70% by early 2026, when supply cannot… In-depth analysisRead → 03The evidence Food Prices and Social Unrest (1990–2026): The Speed of the Rise, Not the Level Alone Each of the three documented waves of food-linked unrest since 1990 (the 2008 food riots, the Arab Spring of 2010-2011, the 2022 crises) struck while world… StudyRead →

Research and data

Our in-depth research and the downloadable series on the subject.

Dataset 2.57%Latest value · September 2026 CPILFESL: Core US CPI Inflation Excluding Food and Energy, Monthly Series Since 1957 See the data → Dataset 3.12%Latest value · September 2026 PCEPILFE: Core US PCE Inflation Index Excluding Food and Energy, Monthly Since 1959 See the data → StudyReal Commodity Prices (1960–2025): The Things We Grow Got Cheaper, the Ones We Burn Got Dearer StudyUS Cattle Herd Hits a 75-Year Low as Beef Sets Records

All analyses, by angle

Grouped by sub-topic rather than by date. Filter to get straight to the point.

Agricultural Commodities6

The sub-pillar →

Other angles12

Related topics

The subjects that most often intersect with this topic in our analyses.

Energy & Oil49 pieces Oil only becomes a recession story once its cost claims a large enough share of the economy. 3 in common → Inflation114 pieces Inflation is a regime rather than a monthly print, and its persistence matters more than its level. 3 in common → Financial Instability24 pieces Financial stress is measurable: it often shows up in volatility and credit spreads before it reaches the headlines. 1 in common → Geopolitical Fragmentation7 pieces Geopolitics moves markets less through wars than through the trade routes, inventories and tariffs it redraws. 1 in common → Investor Behaviour & Biases13 pieces Costly financial mistakes rarely come from picking the wrong asset; they come from trusting the wrong intuition. 1 in common →
This topic also exists in French.Agricole et alimentaire, 7 pieces →