What I learned this Week: November 24, 2024
The planets are aligned for a trip to Food is Health
Lessons of the Week
Over the last few weeks, I was a near observer of the cabinet appointment sausage making. I also attended the annual Aimpoint War Game. These and other swirling plates reveal the opportunity ahead….
Call it Food is Health or Make America Healthy Again….. The planets are aligned to move from our old strategy of Cheap Calories: boosting yield and reducing famine; to Affordable Nutrition: boosting nutrition density to improve longevity.
A journey to Mars and longevity is in our future.
What I learned this week….
Fairlife is one example of affordable nutrition. There are 60K SKUs in a Walmart grocery. Each SKU, from broccolini to Cheetos, has the opportunity to become affordable nutrition. Real food will get to the consumer first, but CPGs will catch up in time.
Productivity from factories replaced the agrarian economy, boosting GDP. Reducing work week from 80 hours to 40 in the process. Improving the quality of life, longevity and lowering the cost of food. AI will do the same.
Human capability isn’t bounded; it can continuously expand - linearly or exponentially. That is why Paul Ehrlich and many others have been wrong.
NVIDIA’s market cap is approximately $3.5 trillion, while Germany's and Italy's combined market cap is around $3.3 trillion.
Given the unique qualities of the United States, we can quadruple US GDP growth (Up to 10% per year) with AI being the factory and humans relieved to create new value distribution mechanisms, business models, and knowledge networks.
In a $100 bag of groceries, $7 is the agricultural input. 93% of food is processing, transport, marketing, waste etc. The opportunity for affordable nutrition will occur in the space from farmgate to the dinner table.
HelloFresh notes that 70% of perishables worldwide are wasted. Within their supply chain, they claim only to waste 1% of perishables. HelloFresh is innovating how Ready-To-Eat enables affordable nutrition.
Hims & Hers is adding nutrition options to their GLP-1 offering. They are not just another online bookstore.
GLP-1s and their derivatives will reduce $300B+ of annual acute care revenue. Perhaps faster than major health centers can adapt. Value-based providers have more time to pivot.
The Silicon Valley of Food is Health: Imagine if USDA and NIH were moved out of DC and instead co-located in St. Louis or Indianapolis. Changing out talent. Breaking rent seeker ruts. How would that bureaucracy change Food and Health?
We are likely in the back half of the 4th Turning. Read the book if you want the spoilers.
Sorry NDT, we are going to Mars.
Unlike traditional businesses, [agricultural] products - animals and crops - are born or grown, making them invisible on bank statements until they are sold.
Dave Dodds, CEO of Figured, a provider of farm financial reporting dashboards
THE DIRECTIONS GROUP 139
Some Conclusions
Society rotates through 4 generational changes from the Greatest Generation of the 40s to the malaise of the 70s and the political disruption of 2020s. And then back again. It has been doing this forever. Referred to as “Turnings” we are in the 4th turning. During the 4th turning, society migrates to socialism or innovates to progress to a new level of innovation and growth. The recent political chaos over the last 10 years is consistent with the generational predictions. We are on the back half of the 4th turning. For Europe and other countries, the 4th turning appears to reduce Europe’s future relevance. For the US, our nature to innovate and our robust capital markets fuel innovations, like AI, that help the US ascend during the 4th turning. Another good book on the topic of US unique strength in this period is The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. In the near term, we will see some labor disruptions that long term are healthy shifts to total factor productivity gains in a broader array of US industries. The US is the global architect of improved total factor productivity.
Some Data and Links
A ‘Crazy’ Idea for Treating Autoimmune Diseases Might Actually Work
CRISPR is easier to implement than GMO. It is effective at creating architectural changes in crops, improving crop resilience. (Technology Review)
Grok is growing quickly and has the advantage of training from real-time data on X. I frankly thought at the time, this is why Musk bought twitter.
This Weeks Charts
We produced children to supply farm labor. We then produced children to supply factory labor. With AI, we do not need to produce children to increase knowledge. In a knowledge economy labor is now uncorrelated to knowledge and productivity.
While the supply chain got overloaded with wine during COVID-19, people drink much less alcohol and wine.
