Food price increases over several years
 

I just bought a few blocks of Italian Peccorino Romano cheese from Costco for $7.29 a pound. Romano cheese keeps well in the fridge, and it freezes well too, so I figured I'd get a few blocks.

I have had a block of the same cheese in my fridge for several years. It had a "best by" date of January 2006, so I probably bought it in the fall of 2005. Amazingly, it grew no mold and lost no flavor (as far as I can tell) in all that time.

The cheese cost $4.95 a pound back in late 2005, compared to $7.29 a pound now in mid 2008. That's a 47.27% increase in price, which would seem quite astonishing if I had my head in the sand. I'm guessing Italian Romano cheese is not captured in the CPI.

I'd love to be able to compare the costs of hundreds of specific food items over the past three years. I bet it would be an eye-opener for most people if they'd never calculated the increase before. Anyone know of a source for specific brand price change data?

Re: Food price increases over several years
 

Just got a new menu from my favorite Chinese restaurant for 2008. Comparing it to the 2007 version, almost everything is up 15-20%.

Astonishing. Imagine it compounding at that rate for a couple more years and there will not be a middle class left, while the politicians are still babling about using socialism to solve all of our problems. :rant:

Re: Food price increases over several years
 

Here's something I scaned while surfing a Iranian newspaper.
The agribusiness profits are starting to mirror oil company profits. Could this be part of the rise in prices.?
http://www.iran-daily.com/1387/3119/html/ieconomy.htm
agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday reported.
And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry. The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world�s poor--who already spend about 80 percent of their income on food--into hunger and destitution.

100m Face Sever Hunger
The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world�s richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543 million (�275 million) to $1.12 billion. Its profits increased from $1.44 billion to $2.22 billion.
Cargill�s net earnings soared by 86 percent from $553 million to $1.030 billion over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world�s largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 percent in the first three months of this year from $363 million to $517 million. The operating profit of its grains merchandizing and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21 million to $341 million.
Similarly, the Mosaic Company, one of the world�s largest fertilizer companies, saw its income for the three months ending 29 February rise more than 12-fold, from $42.2 million to $520.8 million, on the back of a shortage of fertilizer. The prices of some kinds of fertilizer have more than tripled over the past year as demand has outstripped supply. As a result, plans to increase harvests in developing countries have been hit hard.
The Food and Agriculture Organization reports that 37 developing countries are in urgent need of food. And food riots are breaking out across the globe from Bangladesh to Burkina Faso, from China to Cameroon, and from Uzbekistan to the United Arab Emirates.

Speculations Trigger Prices
Benedict Southworth, director of the World Development Movement, called the escalating earnings and profits �immoral� late last week. He said that the benefits of the food price increases were being kept by the big companies, and were not finding their way down to farmers in the developing world.
The soaring prices of food and fertilizers mainly come from increased demand. This has partly been caused by the boom in biofuels, which require vast amounts of grain, but even more by increasing appetites for meat, especially in India and China; producing 1lb of beef in a feedlot, for example, takes 7lbs of grain.
World food stocks at record lows, export bans and a drought in Australia have contributed to the crisis, but experts are also fingering food speculation. Professor Bob Watson--chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who led the giant International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development--last week identified it as a factor.
Index-fund investment in grain and meat has increased almost fivefold to over $47 billion in the past year, concludes AgResource Co, a Chicago-based research firm. And the official US Commodity Futures Trading Commission held special hearings in Washington two weeks ago to examine how much speculators were helping to push up food prices.
The revelations are bound to increase outrage over multinational companies following last week�s disclosure that Shell and BP between them recorded profits of �14 billion in the first three months of the year--or �3 million an hour--on the back of rising oil prices.

Re: Food price increases over several years
 

only 100million? Good thing that the world birth rate is 210million/year (7 per second), according to population biologists.

Sad but that is the way the world works. People facing starvation eventually die off and we are back into equilibrium well that is until people make too many babies and fall into starvation. Rinse and repeat.

Re: Food price increases over several years
 

My lady just came back from shopping........I like pasta....she picked up somel boxes of elbows...you could see how the box had to be about 3oz smaller than before. You can physically see the difrence


Everything shirinks .except the price.


Got Bullion?


T

Re: Food price increases over several years
 

I use this to educate and point out inflation to my friends and family. It's really simple and easy. Take almost any product that is individually wrapped and then look at the ~20% missing. The prices only went up a little bit (about 10%) but you are paying more for the same thing. Obvious to us here but many people do not notice things like that.