This scare-mongering is really starting to drive me nuts! "Oh no, our food is going to be too expensive! Wheat prices are going to skyrocket and bread will be unaffordable!"
Do you know how much the wheat costs in your $2+ dollar loaf of bread? How much the farmer gets? Less than $0.11 LESS. THAN. ELEVEN. BLOODY. CENTS!
If the commodity price of wheat doubles, it would only add eleven cents more to the price of a loaf of bread! The rest of the damn cost is just processing, packaging, marketing, and corporate profits.
So if bread prices do go through the roof it will not be because the commodity price itself went up. It'll be because processors and retails are exploiting the media-fueled scare like this to raise prices and increase their profits, counting on consumer ignorance. Odds are the farmers will still end up getting screwed and not get a fair price for their product.
And if food prices do go up a bit in Canada, well guess what, it's about time. We've had a cheap food policy in this country for a decade now. Do you know what food price inflation rate in Canada was last year? 0.6 per cent. It was 5.4 per cent in the US.
Sorry if I'm ranting, but this new food price scare thing the media's getting on to is really annoying. It's going to get consumers all screaming and complaining about food prices, which is going to put downward pressure on prices, and you know who's going to get screwed in the end... not the retail and processing corporations... it'll be the farmers.
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Date: 2008-03-17 08:14 pm (UTC)This scare-mongering is really starting to drive me nuts! "Oh no, our food is going to be too expensive! Wheat prices are going to skyrocket and bread will be unaffordable!"
Do you know how much the wheat costs in your $2+ dollar loaf of bread? How much the farmer gets?
Less than $0.11
LESS. THAN. ELEVEN. BLOODY. CENTS!
If the commodity price of wheat doubles, it would only add eleven cents more to the price of a loaf of bread!
The rest of the damn cost is just processing, packaging, marketing, and corporate profits.
So if bread prices do go through the roof it will not be because the commodity price itself went up. It'll be because processors and retails are exploiting the media-fueled scare like this to raise prices and increase their profits, counting on consumer ignorance. Odds are the farmers will still end up getting screwed and not get a fair price for their product.
And if food prices do go up a bit in Canada, well guess what, it's about time. We've had a cheap food policy in this country for a decade now. Do you know what food price inflation rate in Canada was last year? 0.6 per cent.
It was 5.4 per cent in the US.
Sorry if I'm ranting, but this new food price scare thing the media's getting on to is really annoying. It's going to get consumers all screaming and complaining about food prices, which is going to put downward pressure on prices, and you know who's going to get screwed in the end... not the retail and processing corporations... it'll be the farmers.