Food and feed additives: Correlation
Prices it moves with, and why
Food and feed additives include starches, sweeteners, emulsifiers, acidulants, amino acids and vitamins. Many are made by fermenting maize or sugar, so crop prices and energy set costs, while Chinese capacity dominates amino acids and vitamins.
No public price Food and feed additives has no public monthly price series: Many products on private contracts; no single public price index.What its price moves with
Maize starch and glucose are the base for citric acid, lysine, sweeteners and many thickeners. A poor maize harvest raises costs across these additives, though large Chinese fermentation plants often run on local corn.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Cane sugar and molasses are alternative fermentation feeds for acids and amino acids, especially in India and Brazil. Sugar prices also affect demand for alternative sweeteners used by food and drink makers.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Lecithin, a common emulsifier, is a by-product of soybean oil refining, and soy protein is used in feed and food. Soybean crush volumes therefore affect lecithin supply and its price.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Lysine, methionine and threonine are added to animal feed to balance protein, and form a large part of the feed additive market. Their prices swing with Chinese capacity and with pig and poultry herds.
No public price for amino acids (lysine, methionine), so the link is explained in words only.Vitamins A and E and the B group are added to feed and fortified foods, with production concentrated in China and Europe. Plant outages have caused sharp price spikes for feed premixes.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.Poultry is the largest user of feed additives in India, so growth in chicken production drives demand for amino acids, vitamins and enzymes. Poultry prices themselves are set by local supply and feed costs.
Not enough overlapping price history to measure.How to read these numbers
Correlation of monthly changes (the number in the coloured pill) compares how much each price moved, month by month, since 2006 or the first month both series exist. It runs from −1 to +1: near +1 the two usually rise and fall in the same months, near 0 there is no link, and a negative number means they tend to move in opposite directions. Above 0.7 is strong, 0.4 to 0.7 moderate, 0.2 to 0.4 weak.
12-month changes compare year-on-year moves, which shows whether two prices share the same cycles even when the month-to-month noise differs.
Price function is a straight-line fit of the two prices on logarithmic scales: price ≈ k × (partner price)β. β is how much this price moves, in per cent, for a 1% move in the partner over the whole period, and R² is the share of the variation the fit explains. Two prices that both drift up with inflation can fit well without any real link, so read it together with the monthly correlation.
Lead or lag checks whether the monthly correlation is clearly higher when one price is shifted by 1 to 6 months.
Correlation is not cause. The reasons on each card explain the economic link; the numbers show how strongly it has shown up in prices. Proxy series are US producer price indexes or related prices and can blur the real link.
Data: World Bank Commodity Price Data (Pink Sheet), October 2026; US Bureau of Labor Statistics producer price indexes, IMF primary commodity prices and US EIA prices via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, retrieved November 2026. Calculations by this site.