High-fat diets causing food prices to balloon, farmers struggle to keep up
Popular high-fat diets, like Keto and Paleo that have grown in popularity over the last few years, have increased the global appetite for food items such as avocados, olive oil and salmon, causing prices to jump and leaving farmers struggling to catch up on demand.
As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, the average prices of avocados, butter and olive oil have climbed as much as 60 percent since 2013. The price of salmon, for example, has ballooned more than 128 percent since 2012, while sugar prices have decreased more than 40 percent, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But it’s not just the U.S. -- New Zealand, the world’s largest exporter of butter, said prices have increased by more than 50 percent from 2012. Overall butter consumption worldwide rose more than 13 percent in last five years ending in 2018, according the USDA. The Journal noted that China, South Korea and Japan have all increased their appetites for the spread as well.
The new “fat” health kick is also forcing avocado growers and fish farmers to think of new ways to meet the surging demand as environment constraints due to climate change become more pressing globally.
Olive oil producers in California, for example, have been struggling in recent years due to droughts.
Earlier this month, Morgan Stanley found that North America absorbed two-thirds of the total cost of climate-related disasters over the last three years, which is estimated at $415 billion ($650 billion total) and warned that number could top $54 trillion by 2040.
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"We expect the physical risks of climate change to become an increasingly important part of the investment debate for 2019," Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note released earlier this month, urging private enterprises to strongly prepare for more disasters in the future.