When normal is not.

Prime Future 210: the newsletter for innovators in livestock, meat, and dairy

Until last year, I only knew a world in which a residential mortgage was fixed rate for 30 years. Sure, you could get variations on that, such as 15 years or a variable rate, but most mortgages in the US are fixed for 30 years. That's normal.

And then I learned that what I considered normal from a US perspective is actually anything but that from a global perspective.

In Canada and the UK, a normal residential mortgage is likely to be a 25-year note with a rate fixed for only the first 5 years. Meanwhile, in Japan, the standard residential mortgage is 100 years. A 30-year mortgage was actually only a thing in the US as of the 1980s; before that, a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage was standard.

What I thought was "normal" was not normal based on historical comparisons within the US or current mortgage norms worldwide.

I love stumbling on things like this, where it had never even occurred to me to wonder if my definition of normal is globally normal.

Even if learning about variations in mortgage structures around the world isn't actionable, stumbling on a dynamic like this has value because it expands the mental boundaries of what's viable.

And that can come in handy, as we'll discuss today.

This brings us to the variation in norms across the globe in beef production and why it matters, along with the import of coffee culture to the US. (Stay with me; it's all relevant!)