What if simultaneous droughts sparked a global grain shortage?
Synchronized droughts cutting wheat/corn yields feed straight into food CPI and inflation-fragile EM FX, with a secondary gas/fertilizer link via heat-driven power demand. The defining rhyme is the 2010-11 Russian heat-wave/export-ban grain spike that fed the Arab-Spring food-price surge, and the 2012 US Midwest drought. Forward angle: today's larger global stocks-to-use buffer and Black Sea normalization cap the upside versus 2010 — fade parabolic grain unless multiple breadbaskets fail at once; the EM-FX inflation leg is the more reliable trade.
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 6–18 months 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…
What it would mean
If this plays out, it is a mixed shock. Simultaneous droughts cause a global wheat/grain shortage and a food-price crisis. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Climate/crop supply ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.