Energy & Commodities mixed · 1–3 years
A what‑if from the future

What if the TR4 fungus reaches Latin America's banana plantations?

TR4 in Ecuador/Colombia is a banana-specific supply threat — long banana import prices and pain for Chiquita/Dole/Fyffes sourcing, not a grain trade. Rhymes with the mid-20th-century Panama-disease wipeout of the Gros Michel that forced the global switch to Cavendish; TR4 has no resistant replacement at scale yet. Ecuador is the top exporter, so transmission is EU/US retail produce and Latin export FX; the wheat/corn proxy is the wrong instrument.

17%
our model probability
over 1–3 years
prediction markets — the market's odds
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Anchored to measured history 17% · 90% range 8–27% · 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. Fusarium TR4 ravages Cavendish banana plantations in Ecuador and Colombia, threatening the global export banana supply. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Climate/crop supply ▲ · Food inflation ▲ — 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.