Days of cheap food are over, say suppliers as ingredient costs soar

[phantom power]

Supermarket pledges to drive down the price of staple goods and help cash-strapped shoppers looked increasingly vulnerable last night after Britain's biggest food manufacturer insisted even the largest superstore groups would have to stomach higher prices from suppliers that are struggling with steep rises in ingredient costs.

Premier Foods, the group behind Branston Pickle, Oxo, Mr Kipling and Quorn, said a "systemic change" in world ingredient markets, with "violent rises" in many commodities, had heralded a new era, bringing to a close almost 15 years of relatively stable, low inflation.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2162376,00.html

[GliderGuider]

1. Boy, if we were counting food prices into inflation, we'd be in trouble.

Thank God our far-sighted leaders had the wisdom to insulate us from the effects of inflation like that.

[phantom power]

2. Wise, wise economists. Who cares if the measure is *wrong*, as long as it's well behaved?

[soothsayer]

9. didn't they take out fuel and housing, too?

[endarkenment]

11. But damn DVD's sure is cheap

And that iPhone dropped by 40%! We Is Rich!

Actually We Are Screwn.

[TexasBushwhacker]

3. What good has cheap food done us anyway?

I work in the grocery distribution business. When I see everything that goes into getting food from where it's produced to your dinner table, I'm amazed at how cheap food is.

Let's take bananas, for example. They grow only in tropical climates, so they have to be shipped thousands of miles from Hawaii or Central America. They come in through customs. They are delivered to the wholesaler who puts them into cases and ships truckloads to distribution centers around the country. The distributor ships them out to individual stores and you can still buy them for less than a dollar a pound.

In the US, what has this abundance of cheap food done for us other than make us fat?

[kestrel91316]

4. Important point. And cheap imports make it much harder for folks in

Third World countries to farm enough to feed themselves, so they become dependent on and indebted to us.

[tom_paine]

15. Kestrel, when you speak of Third World nations you ARE speaking of Amerika

Yes, I know...for the moment we are such a wealthy Third World Nation it almost doesn;t seem like we are what we are.

But compare our media and political systems against Free World nations and our Third World status will become VERY clear.

Ironically, what Imperial Amerika does now to abuse our fellow Third World nations will eventually be revisited in spades when Imperial Amerika falls, as all empires that have no tradition of freedom do.

And I cannot say we won't desrve the payback fromn the children and grandchildren of our victims.

Not anymore, I can't.

[phantom power]

5. Yeah, but will expensive food improve nutrition and eating habits?

If life has taught me anything, it's that Murphy's law isn't constrained by zero-sum physics.

To wit: this isn't going to result in a return to healthy basics, it's just going to give us unafordable Cheetos.

[Nostradammit]

6. You're saying cheap bananas have made us fat?

Cheap food is NOT the problem. Cheap food allows those who spend the bulk of their income
on housing to survive. What good would expensive food do for us?

[TexasBushwhacker]

10. If the raw materials were more expensive ....

maybe it would force us to eat fewer fast and/or prepared foods. Cheap meat, for example, makes it easier to make cheap fast food, which tends to be high in calories. Cheap ingredients like high fructose corn syrup make it easier to make cheap sugary drinks, which people will buy rather than something that has some nutritional value but costs more, like fruit juice.

Cheap food is like cheap gas. It just makes it easier to be a glutton.

[GliderGuider]

12. And what's the situation outside your borders?

Say for the 3 billion people out there who "live" on less than $2 a day? The billion who live on less than $1 a day? What does a price rise do for them? Does it keep them from getting being gluttons too?

[hogwyld]

13. That's the 64 thousand dollar question

The poorest will probably be the first to feel the effects of peak oil, climate change, and loss of food supply. We are in for a major population adjustment in this world.

[Gregorian]

7. Demand for food is directly proportional to the number of mouths.

Nobody can argue with that one. And that translates to population.

We had better start bringing down the population. Warning!

Edit- That's the major concern. But there are alternatives. We can start producing locally. That means no more pineapples in Alaska. I believe it's petroleum costs that are affecting prices. That's why I say that. Our diets can be changed dramatically. Less milk. Coffee? That's pretty damn energy intensive.

The point I'm making is, we either decrease population or decrease convenience and diversity.

[spirald]

8. Wow, food made out of cheap poison not selling anymore?

Now that the quality has hit rock bottom, we can't shove inflation under the rug anymore, can we? Now it's payback time for all those price increases we've put off in favor of lowering the bar on the ingredients.

[philb]

14. Not for me; I work in big city but have enough land to grow most of my veges and fruit

all kinds of vegetables, lots of pears, figs, blueberries, blackberries, peaches, plums, scupanon grapes, etc.

[Javaman]

16. Store your salt now, you will need it later for preserving. nt