It depends on the place and the time, but my anecdotal experience is that for certain types of staples: Yes, with a caveat*.


*I mainly shop at Fairway in Redhook, Brooklyn if I can, because I like a fairly wide selection with specialty items and a lot of good deals if you are willing to be careful about when they offer the bullshit tenderloin (because it's bullshit). They have their own deals for eggs, so organic jams are at least a dollar or more cheaper than most other places (often 2 dozen for five bucks), and they get great bulk deals on certain meats, fishes, produce (often about to be overripe) and cheeses. BUT orange juice, milk and packaged breads are all a dollar up and in regular groceries you are about to pay upwards of four bucks for a half gallon of OJ or organic milk and there's at least a two or three dollar increase in chicken most places (except the boneless thighs, they discount them because they are trying to get America to love them, I'm down!)

The upshot is I've noticed a definite fuel surcharge in most non-super supermarkets and my moms, just up from New Orleans, told me that for the first time all of our supermarkets are cheaper than down there, when all of my time in NO I was paying essentially nothing for food.

I remember suddenly about four years ago breakfast cereal went from being an extremely cheap college student staple at 2-4 dollars a box, to jumping up to an average of 4-7 dollars a box. At the time I remember my roommates and I being shocked because it was a) so sudden and b) come on, it's CEREAL. I didn't care too much because I don't like eating cereal for breakfast.

Produce especially, and meat/poultry/fish as well are clearly increasing here over the past two years. Processed stuff, no not so much. Why our nation is fat, etc. If I balk at the price of apples, they are not an option for shoppers trying to feed a family on a budget. It's a crying shame. I know I could do some kind of collective or something, but if I don't have time, how do the budget/family shoppers have time. I'm getting madder and madder about food supply and the farm bill and all kinds of stuff.

I notice produce prices at stores a lot these days since I've been able to buy a lot of that stuff at the farmer's market over the summer. Our farmer's market is made up of about 15 booths run by mostly elderly people. I can get yellow squash, zucchini and eggplant for 25 cents a piece. I can get melon (cantaloupe, honeydew, watermelon) for $1-$3 (depending on which booth). Last week some young kid was selling his goods and I showed up at the end of the day and got a free box of corn (about 3 dozen ear - now cooked and frozen as plain corn or creamed corn)...because he didn't want to take it home and have it waste.

I also notice that chicken prices are way up. Ground turkey prices are up, too.

Here in sunny SoCal, our family shops at three places: Stater Brothers, a regional chain; Ralphs, part of the national Kroger chain and which is our most local market, and Trader Joe's, which is a little further away (like an extra five minutes in the car).

Stater Bros is the only market near us that has a respectable, cheap, staffed and helpful meat department. Ralphs charges through the nose for everything except produce which is often pretty nice, is walkable from the house, and is near a bunch of other stuff we use, like the pharmacy and the hardware store, so we pop in there twice a week.

But Trader Joe's RULES. A dozen large eggs, raised as well as a chicken could expect, are $1.19 a dozen, and they're from San Diego, just an hour or so away; Ralphs gets over $2 for a dozen eggs of unknown origins. Frosted shredded mini-wheat cereal is $2.99 for 20 ounces at TJ's, and over $5 at Ralphs and Stater Bros. Basically, TJ's labels a bunch of items under its own brand and doesn't do any TV ads, so I imagine that keeps costs down. Cheese, milk, orange juice, yogurt, wine, butter, fish, staples like flour and sugar, dry pasta, bread, frozen stuff, and sauces/dips are all dramatically cheaper at TJ's. We easily save $40 a week shopping there; we eat in almost every night as we're quite the budding gourmand/es. Produce is a challenge there, because it all comes packaged, but they've usually got a wide enough selection of the California/Italian standards - zucchini, tomatoes, avocados, melons, oranges, etc. - that we rarely find ourselves stuck for lack of greenery, and their packaged salad leaves are cheaper than anywhere else as well. I realize how Pepsi Blue (White?) that all sounds, but seriously, that store has essentially eliminated branded junk food and soda from our house by making healthier options way, way more accessible than they ever were before. AND we usually use a location in a new development, so it's not totally mobbed yet. AND they don't card me anymore because we're always in there and we know everyone's name!

I used to shop only at TJ's when I was living in Santa Cruz because the one store on the side of town where most UCSC students lived, Safeway, was universally expensive and had terrible quality produce; when I came home from college, I essentially laid down the law and made a chart of a week's shopping to show the family how much more we were spending at Ralphs and Stater Bros. My mom was floored.

*deposits giant TJ's endorsement check*

I've definitely noticeed increases in produce (veggies more than fruit, at least in terms of my regular purchases), dairy, fish/poultry (I don't buy beef anymore), and staples like tea, flour, and cereal. I'm in SoCal and shop almost exclusively at TJ's or farmer's markets, with only very occasional supermarket trips for convenience.

I've heard bits and pieces about biofuel demand increasing the demand for corn and thus pushing up the commodity markets. The effect it has on the end consumer depends on context.

Oh, duh, I totally missed the linked article.

*deposits giant TJ's endorsement check*

Trader Joes is awesome. Cheap food and they usually have a great beer selection.

I've found that beef, especially beef that a reasonable person might actually want to eat, is getting hugely expensive. A nice well marbled piece of organic prime tenderloin at the fancy butcher shop here was recently marked $40 a lb., presumably without irony. It looked like a good piece of meat, which was interesting to me because I haven't seen such a thing in retail supermarkets for some years. I waved at it wistfully as I walked by the case.

I feel like it was only 2 or 3 years ago when $20 a lb was an outrageous, unpalatable price for a decent piece of tenderloin, suitable to make me rant and rave for 10 minutes before refusing to buy it on principle. The kind of tenderloin you can buy now for $20 a lb is just not the good stuff.

Same story with other meats and produce. Processed foods are not keeping up with the price inflation but I suspect they're probably cutting corners on ingredients.

Citrus prices in South Florida remain high because of the damage to groves in 2004 and 2005's hurricanes, which cut the 2005 crop yield by nearly 50%, but longer term, also increased the spread of canker and citrus greening in the groves. Accordingly, with weather problems in the other citrus regions of California and Texas, citrus prices are high, and likely to stay that way into next year. A new GIS system for tracking the Florida citrus industry went online in 2006, and is confirming problems growers have been reporting in recent years. APHIS is also continuing to restrict movement of fresh Florida citrus out of state, due to canker, so only pasteurized juice products can really be considered as having national price effects.

This year, much of Florida has also experienced drought conditions, cutting local supplies of beef, and putting further pressure on citrus, sugar beet, and vegetable operations. The state estimates current 2007 agricultural losses at $100 million, and projects that could go as high as $1 billion. Coupled with flooding in Texas, and continued Western droughts, you could be seeing still higher prices for citrus, beef, sugar and soybean products in coming months. But pork, fish and chicken prices around here remain fairly stable, and nationally wheat prices, while high against the previous 5 year average, haven't seen as much rise in futures as other commodities.

Personally, I like to read Fresh Plaza.com occasionally, for global perspectives on agriculture. Going into fall here in North America, I'm concerned about early season freeze losses in Chile, which are bound to affect the price and availability of fresh produce here this winter.

In recent weeks the small locally-farmed produce items at our big grocery chain have stayed consistent in price, which now puts them below the larger farm stuff. Not exactly the same things, I mean, you might have local Gala apples and out-of-town Granny Smiths or something, but it's close enough comparisons that even I noticed.

My roommate and I spent something nutty, like $160, on groceries this month. We had to get chicken, couldn't afford any of the cuts of beef, and got ground instead. Chicken's like $25 for the 5 lb family pack now (I get those and then open them and break them into two-breast servings before I freeze since it's cheaper). It was, in my casher days about 15 years ago, rarely more than $1 or 2/lb, and never more in the "family packs."
Milk's gotten crazy expensive, to the point that lactaid doesn't seem so big an expense anymore.

Yeah, it's more expensive. My weekly grocery bill has jumped by about $20 over the last few months and there doesn't seem to be a damn thing I can do about it. I shop at Aldi already but even though they're way cheaper, it makes it more difficult to plan, since you never know from week to week just what they will have. Also, they never have stuff like coffee filters and soy milk and so on, staples, so I shop at Ingles (WNC local chain) as well. And Earthfare (our local Whole Foods equivalent) for good bread, some organic stuff, vitamins and the sinfully expensive Greek yogurt to which I am somewhat addicted.

Yesterday was the first day of school here and my son came home to tell me that at the high school, a slice of pizza has gone from $2.25 to $3 and a Chik Fil A (don't get me started, I know, it makes me furious too, fast food in the cafeteria) sandwich went from $3.50 to $4.50.

I track inflation by watching the price of a single plastic thing of soda. At most places where they could be bought last year for $1.19, they're up to $1.39.

i track by a few items such as chicken and gas. Both are crazy with the illogical and have been for quite some time.

I've noticed a lot of dairy going up, especially in the organic frou frou section. Produce, as others have noted, has gone way up, even at (shudder) Wal-mart. It's cheaper to get it frozen.

Highly processed food is up as well. Dry staples, like pasta and beans and rice have gone up a little, but not in a break the bank way.

I've been getting my beef from a local rancher for years. He's branched out into more stuff, and I'm getting more and more from him. Just last month I got a gallon of milk for $6, where at the grocery store it's $6.60 (organic, free range, frou frou. Can't stand the brand names, now)

Yeah, our grocery bill is going up rapidly. And we mainly buy fresh produce.

Yep, the "pizza by the slice" economic indicator shows a 25-50¢ increase over the last six months. Hard times have come to stay.

OJ went up 50 cents a carton in the past 6 months or so.

Meeting with economic writers last week, President Bush dismissed several polls that show Americans are down on the economy. He expressed surprise that inflation is one of the stated concerns.

"They cite inflation?" Bush asked, adding that, "I happen to believe the war has clouded a lot of people's sense of optimism."

Ya think?

There are clearly lots of factors influencing food pricing. The distribution network and fuel issue would have to be one of them, I'd imagine. Personally, I'm one of those who believes America's food has been too cheap for too long, because we've sacrificed a lot for low price. Hence, a nation rife with weight-related health problems due to oversupply.

It's responsible, in my view, to pay for the fuels it takes to transport, cool, and greenhouse-grow food. If we're paying more of the real cost for industrial food at the grocery now, perhaps it'll act to encourage people to shift their purchases over to more locally produced seasonal ingredients, whose prices may now look more favorable than they once did. But then I'm also a crazy person who thinks gasoline should cost about twice what it does. If we're serious about reducing consumption.

Wow, I've been doing some interesting looking-up. It looks like biofuels really are the major factor. For a long time I've been suspicious of the biofuel initiative, wondering what our present US administration saw to be gained in their promotion. These articles essentially answer that question; biofuels will enrich the same cluster of people and companies that fossil fuels currently do; they are the institutions that own fuel networks and infrastructure, and can rather easily make the switch to working with a different fuel source material. So biofuel is rapidly growing with support from political initiatives and public investment - you can read bewlow about the number of acres in production for fuel jumping significantly over the last couple years.

Meanwhile, that's not just acreage in the abstract - it's corn, which forms the base of our modern-day food pyramid. Michael Pollan discusses this at length in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma. From corn syrup sweetener to corn flour and starch to feed corn used to produce animal meat, cheeses, and eggs, we've relied on cheap corn since at least the 70s to keep food prices low. Now that an energy market is in there bidding for the same corn, the price is going up. Those who buy it for food production have to match the deeper pockets of those who buy it for fuel.

Financial Times:: "Consumers are facing higher food prices as the cost of agricultural commodities surges on what the industry describes as a ‘perfect storm’ of tight supplies and robust demand."

The Guardian: "Biofuel Demand to Push Up Food Prices."

The Christian Science Monitor,"From Milk to Meat, US Food Prices Spike Upward": "The chief culprit is corn, namely No. 2 feed corn, the staple of the breadbasket. In answer to President Bush's call for greater oil independence, the amount of feed corn distilled into ethanol is expected to double in the next five to six years. Distillation is already sucking up 18 percent of the total crop. The ethanol gambit, in turn, is sending corn prices to historic levels – topping $4 per bushel earlier this year, and remaining high. All of this trickles down to the boards at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, affecting the price of everything from sirloin to eggs (which are up, by the way, 18.6 percent across the nation).'

Business Week, "Food vs. Fuel": 'People had grown accustomed to $2-per-bushel corn. That's not going to happen anymore,' says Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Assn. Higher corn prices are already rippling though the economy, lifting prices for soybeans and other crops, and products like tortillas. Next could be meat, poultry, and even soft drinks. Chicken producers estimate that the industry's feed costs are already up $1.5 billion per year. 'Ultimately, these increases will be passed on to consumers, and we could have a fairly dramatic inflation scenario for food costs,' says William Lapp, president of consultant Advanced Economic Solutions."

CNN, "Biofuels: Green Savior or Red Herring?": "Biofuels set up a competition for food between cars and people," says Monbiot. "The people would necessarily lose: those who can afford to drive are richer than those who are in danger of starvation. U.S. economist Lester R. Brown of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute agrees. 'The food and energy economies, historically separate, are now merging,' he explains. 'In this new economy, if the fuel value of grain exceeds its food value, the market will move it into the energy economy.'

I tend to buy the same things most weeks and have noticed fruit and vegetables increasing in price, even for things that are in season at the moment.

The price of meat doesn't seem to have gone up a lot though, but I do tend to stick to cheaper cuts or chicken. My local Morrison's does a range of ready-marinaded chicken (sweet chili, tikka, chinese, etc) that's two packs for £5, and they've been the same price for a couple of years.

Out of a choice of Sainsbury's, Tesco, Waitrose, Morrison's and Marks & Spencer all within a reasonable drive, I choose Morrison's, although I'll occasionally nip into Waitrose because it's near the station to see if they have anything reduced. Waitrose and Marks & Spencer's prices are too high for me to do my weekly shop there. Sainsbury's is meh, it's alright if you like their own brand stuff. Tesco is hell on earth. There's no Asda (Wal*Mart) near me, but, again, hell on earth. Morrison's is good quality and low prices, and I know where everything is in store so I can go straight to the aisles I want without much bother.

I've only been to one Trader Joe, at Easton in Columbus, but fell in love with the place. I wish wish wish wish we had TJ's here.

I wish wish wish wish we had TJ's here.

Ditto!

It's responsible, in my view, to pay for the fuels it takes to transport, cool, and greenhouse-grow food. If we're paying more of the real cost for industrial food at the grocery now, perhaps it'll act to encourage people to shift their purchases over to more locally produced seasonal ingredients, whose prices may now look more favorable than they once did. But then I'm also a crazy person who thinks gasoline should cost about twice what it does.

I sympathize with your goal of revamping our food supply to be more congruent with the earth that supports us all.

I don't agree with the tactic of imposing price increases on poor and working-class people who pay a larger share of their paychecks for such staples.

The problem is, j_p, it's not a simple choice between sustainability and cheap food. It's really complicated. The prices are going to go up anyway (see linked articles), because they have been kept artificially low for a long time, and the game is up. The oil resources that let us do that are running out. The wealthier, as always, will still have the ability to pay for both food and fuel, but since both are likely to continue to increase, poor people will end up getting squeezed in a tough choice - either limited mobility and thus employment beyond what they experience today, or the very cheapest food possible. Kind of like when my ancestors subsisted mostly on porridge, turnips and potatoes until industrial agriculture came along, increased yield, and drove food prices down, at great cost to our health and the environment.

I'm not suggesting that anyone act to adjust food prices for idealistic reasons(although a lot of the poor people I know farm), but food prices are set to undergo a correction as the abundance of the industrial age we collides with its lack of sustainability planning.

The poor will always be with us. They just won't be able to choose all the things they do today. The rich will still have that ability, as they always have. The question is, who will we enrich and who will we impoverish with our future consumer choices?

Since world food and fuel prices are bound to rise universally, what consumers are left to do is cast monetary votes toward systems that generate more ancillary benefits, which local food systems definitely do, as opposed to contributing toward global industrial food systems, which suck dollars out of local economies and reduce community coherence while reducing land yield over the long haul and threatening genetic diversity, which could end up being fairly disastrous for life on earth if an important monoculture crop - like corn - is totally wiped out by a blight.

There are a ton of systems problems in making more locally produced food available where the urban poor can get it. But we will have to solve them. Diverting the same amount of dollars in a food budget to locally sourced rather than imported food will buy less food in terms of food bulk but will pay back more real economic benefit into the community. Given that most Americans, including and sometimes most threatening the poor, already consume too many calories, it's a change I think we can start working toward.

An associated problem: You won't find anybody who's going to come out against the poor being able to afford food. But which poor are most important? The American poor, who are already living high on the hog compared to most of the world? There are countries in which the poor are already paying more than 50% of their annual household budget just to eat. This USDA report has some comparitive data (there's more recent data out there, but not for free on the web. However, the basic gist - that the world's poorest countries pay 3-4 times as much as we do for food as a share of income -- remains true):

The United States spent the smallest share of its PCE on food at home, only 9 percent, while Tanzania, with the lowest per capita income, spent the highest share, 71 percent...The high-income countries in the sample spend an average of 16 percent of their PCE on food, while the middle-income countries spend 35 percent, and the low-income countries spend 55 percent.

Things get even more complex later in that report, where you can read that the developed countries spend less on food, but pay a higher cost per calorie than countries in the developing world:

And look at how much American food spending has dropped in just the last 50 or so years - by more than half. This drop doesn't represent farmers giving food away - it represents cheap oil, commodity subsidies (from taxes), and transportation infrastructure.
This is a good consideration of some of the economics of local farming.

We can't have both cheap food and a sustainable life on earth. We're all aware of our peak oil problem, but the connection with fossil fuel is absolutely less evident. I agree with both your goals, too, but they can't both be achieved, unless we're on the verge of a Tomorrowland technological miracle that's going to provide some new food sourcing.

God, that was a sloppy post rife with grammatical errors. I got way too into reading gov't reports.

To sum up: Houston, we have a problem.

A very involved response.

I'll answer you tomorrow.

Talk to you then.

Eh, don't worry about it. I deal with this stuff too much as it is.