More meat and more vegetarians (PPC, BYND)
There has been a lot of focus on people looking to reduce their meat consumption. However, most people want to consume more meat than they did two decades ago. Two economists, one from Kansas State University and one from Purdue University recently published a report called “Meat Demand Outdoes Meat Avoidance.” The authors said three-fourths of Americans are still regular meat consumers while one-fourth have adopted flexitarian, vegan, or vegetarian eating habits. In 2021 Americans wanted to consume 31% more beef, 24% more pork, and 40% more chicken than they did in 2000. While millennials are thought of as the group that has adopted alternative proteins and vegan eating, they are the group that eats meat at the highest rate of any generation. That can be true at the same time as the percentage that still eats meat, eats more of it.
Another La Nina (STKL)
The current La Nina set a record for strength last month and is currently forecasted to return for the third year. La Ninas happened about 28% of the time from 1950 to 1999, but in the past 25 winters, they have occurred nearly half the time. La Nina is a natural and cyclical cooling of parts of the equatorial Pacific that leads to cool, wet weather in the Pacific Northwest, drought in the rest of the West, more Atlantic hurricanes, and agricultural losses in the middle of the country. La Nina tends to be more expensive to the U.S. than El Nino. The U.S. agricultural industry performs best in the neutral phase, neither El Nino nor La Nina. The La Nina weather pattern may mean hotter and drier conditions in the Midwest as the growing season progresses. Farmers have been busy catching up with a late planting season due to La Nina wet and cool conditions this spring. Corn and soybeans are approaching their five-year average planting percentage, but oats were 13% points behind the five-year average of 90% as of last week.
Canadian beer sales (TAP)
Canadian domestic beer volumes decreased 4.8% in April, improving slightly from -5.3% in March as seen in the following chart. Imported beer volumes increased 7.7% in April, improving from the 6.2% growth in March. 85% of the beer consumed in Canada is made in Canada. Canada’s bars and restaurants were more locked down than in the U.S., so there should be an even larger swing to the on-premise channel this year.
