I agree. Ethanol from sugar cane is OK, as long as the sugar cane production doesn't interfere with food production. And as far as I can see, a lot more people are going to be driving electric cars before long. What's wrong with tooling around town in a glorified golf cart? And electric cars don't have to be all that nerdy, either. People used electric and steam cars a hundred years ago; my bet is that we'll be putting a lot of that oil to a better use than burning it pretty soon.
If you buy a company based on the theory that the price of meat will rise, you are inserting another uncertainty factor into the equation. And keep in mind that those companies don't control prices of the products they handle. Supply and demand does that. If they're losing enough money, they'll liquidate their herds or flocks, and it takes some time to rebuild production capacity once it's been reduced. The cycle is a few months for poultry, about three years for hogs, and somewhat longer than that for cattle. Low prices force prices even lower, but that all results in higher prices further in the future. Eighty dollar hogs are not even close to cheap, by historical standards. I'm mostly a spread trader. In a situation such as this I'll buy the deferred contracts and sell the nearby. Nearby prices reflect the liquidation pressure while deferred prices will reflect the reduced future supply, and the price it will take to draw that limited supply to market as production capacity is being rebuilt after herd liquidation. It's a well-known cycle. (though not so pronounced in the hogs as it once was, hogs being fed in huge barns, like chickens, nowadays. An operator has fixed costs to try to cover, even if he's losing money, so he feeds hogs almost no matter what.) Eventually those spreads will come back into a more normal relationship with each other, but when that will happen depends on feed grain prices and consumer demand for meat. How a given corporation is going to deal with those market forces is anybody's guess, so that's pretty much a crapshoot. But you'll want to look for a company that is focused on meat production, such as Pilgrim's Pride, more than Tyson Foods, which is also in that business in a very big way, but is able to recover some of its losses through value-added processing.
Good luck; I hope this helps.
A good bottom's hard to beat.
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