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

What if Ug99 stem rust reaches South Asia's wheat belts?

Ug99 stem rust in South Asian wheat belts is a genuine staple-disaster tail — long wheat outright, with India/Pakistan forced from net exporter toward import and panic stockpiling. Rhymes with the 2007 Ug99 scare that spurred CIMMYT's global resistance-breeding push; a full breach of Indian wheat would dwarf the Black Sea disruptions of 2022. WHEAT root is rightly direct here; the residual fab-water/energy legs are minor but the core mapping is sound.

10%
our model probability
over 1–3 years
prediction markets — the market's odds
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Anchored to measured history 10% · 90% range 3–18% · 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. Virulent Ug99 stem rust spreads from East Africa into South Asian wheat belts, threatening a staple-crop disaster. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Wheat ▲ · 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.