Society & Frontier mixed · 1–3 years
A what‑if from the future

What if a crop-disease outbreak threatens the global food supply?

A crop-disease/agri-contamination crisis lifts grains first - wheat and corn on yield loss - feeding food CPI and pressuring food-importing EM FX. Rhymes with the 2010-11 Russian wheat-export-ban spike and the 2022 Ukraine grain shock, both of which drove sharp grain rallies and EM food-inflation stress. Transmission: the squeeze hits net food importers (MENA, parts of Asia/Africa) hardest via the currency and the subsidy bill. Forward angle: today's higher baseline stocks-to-use and substitution cushion the move versus 2022, so favor the grain/fertilizer long over the broad inflation trade.

15%
our model probability
over 1–3 years
prediction markets — the market's odds
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Anchored to measured history 15% · 90% range 5–25% · 40 dated precedents behind it — a wider range means thinner evidence

Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.

The butterfly cascade

How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.

Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving

Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 1–3 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…

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What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. A crop-disease / agri-bio contamination crisis threatens the food supply. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Climate/crop supply ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Market odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-08-13.