What’s fueling food prices? (part 1 of 4)
The following posts ran as an article in the Spring 2011 issue of Texas Farm Bureau’s Texas Neighbors publication. Other resources on food prices include a video and a three-part audio series found here: part 1, part 2, part 3.
We all know the feeling—standing at the grocery store check-out, checkbook in hand, waiting for the cashier to give us our total. Lately it seems as though that total keeps inching upward, and our wallets are already stretched to the limit.
read morePrice to the farmer (food prices, part 2 of 4)
Farmers and ranchers are an essential part of the food production process. Without them, we wouldn’t just be without fresh fruits and vegetables, but also our favorite cereals, dairy products and protein-packed cuts of meat. As with all business owners, farmers rely on the market to determine a fair price for their products, depending upon current supply and consumer demand.
read morePrice at the pump (food prices, part 3 of 4)
Fuel is a major expense for most Americans and especially for farmers and ranchers. They depend on fuel to run their tractors. Petroleum is the seedstock for synthetic fertilizers to grow healthy crops, and fuel powers the trucks that transport their goods from the field to the store.
“The biggest external factor right now is this enormous run up in petroleum prices. We have to continually re-price the agricultural complex, if nothing else, to make up for how much more it costs just to get this product shipped around from buyer to seller,” Sartwelle says. “Farmers’ input prices have gone up just as fast, if not faster, than the sale prices for their products.”
read morePrice on the shelf (food prices, part 4 0f 4)
So, what can you expect on your next trip to the grocery store? American consumers likely will pay moderately higher prices at the store for some food products, particularly for processed goods that require additional links in the production chain.
“We’d expect to see the goods with a higher degree of processing to them, like breakfast cereals and a lot of pre-packaged, pre-cooked materials, to go up faster than a five-pound bag of flour,” Sartwelle suggests. “Those products have a lot more processing, transportation and marketing costs.”
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