“Last week, we ran out of food.”īut there are a couple of bottom-line bright spots: A few months ago, manufacturers finally cut breakfast cereal prices after years of consumer complaints and a campaign by two members of Congress and large production has kept beef prices virtually level.Įconomists differ on what will happen next. “Our food pantry doesn’t have people dropping off food as much as they used to,” said Marti Forman, executive director of the Cooperative Feeding Program in Fort Lauderdale. They say they have more customers than ever, donations are down and their cupboards are getting mighty bare. The rising cost of food also has staggered some of the social service agencies that feed the region’s neediest residents. “They’re having to budget at least 10 percent more [for food) across the board.” “For some of our clients, $25 can mean the difference between making it that month or not,” said Suzanne Cabrera, executive director of the Lord’s Place Inc., a nonprofit organization that takes in homeless families.
“Now it’s $1.49.”įor poor people, who spend as much as 50 percent of their incomes for food, and for those on fixed incomes, the increases have been particularly hard to swallow. “I bought my favorite brand of bread for $1.09 in January,” she said. Since July 1995, pork prices have risen 12.5 percent, dairy prices have increased 6.8 percent and the price of white bread has gone up 8.8 percent, according to the U.S. “They’re putting bacon on everything right now and the export market has been so strong during the last six months to a year.”
“It was just everything, all at once, coming together,” said Annette Clauson, an economist for the U.S. The trend accelerated in June, when wholesale food prices jumped 1.6 percent, the largest single-month change in six years.
Pile on the ice cream cravings brought on by hot weather and watch the ripple effect. In the meantime, demand for poultry, dairy and, especially, pork – from Japan’s hunger for top-quality cuts to American fast-food chains’ obsession with bacon burgers – just grew and grew. The resulting higher feed prices boosted the cost of doing business for ranchers and dairy farmers, who produced less of most meat and dairy products.
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