US broiler chicken production

Since 2005, every uptick in babies named Luna has been accompanied by a corresponding increase in US broiler chicken production, suggesting either that the name carries agricultural connotations no etymologist has detected, or that American parents and American poultry operations share a common muse. Luna climbed from relative obscurity to a top-ten baby name by the late 2010s. Chicken production also went up. The moon, for its part, has not commented.

Luna's rise as a baby name reflects the broader cultural mainstreaming of celestial and nature-inspired names, accelerated by pop culture touchstones including the Harry Potter series and later mainstream fantasy media. US broiler chicken production grew steadily from roughly 35 billion pounds in 2005 to over 44 billion pounds in 2022, driven by population growth, dietary shifts toward white meat, and export demand. Both trends are sustained upward curves over the same eighteen-year window, and any two sustained upward curves will correlate well regardless of subject matter.

The universe produces a great many upward-trending lines, and it is a peculiarity of the human mind that we feel compelled to find the story connecting any two of them. Sometimes the story is just: time passed, and things grew.