Mary Seabrook joked that she won’t have to go to Weight Watchers if food prices keep climbing.
“They are awful,” the Ladson resident said while shopping in a downtown Charleston grocery store. “I just shop for the stuff that’s on sale. I just won’t eat as much.”
Overall food prices will climb 3 percent to 4 percent this year as world demand in an economic recovery drives up the cost of fuel as well as basic commodities such as corn, wheat, soybeans and sugar, agricultural economist Chris Hurt of Purdue University said Monday during the Food Media Seminar at Charleston Place Hotel.
Dramatically increased crude oil prices, increasing food prices, public debt that exceeds public income, printing money to make up federal income shortfalls, a stagnated economy with a withered private sector and bloated public employment rolls, etc; all seem to point to the beginning of a strong inflationary period and quite possibly a period of wild stagflation.
Does anybody remember the 1970s?
My grandparents’ economic behavior was shaped by the Great Depression. Mine was seared by the inflation of the 70s. I’ve been concerned about inflation, been reading that it was most certainly coming, and then I saw it. I was grocery shopping like I always do on Sat mornings. Same store, same items, just a different Saturday …. Almost without exception, every single item I purchased was >5% higher. My children were shielded from it and don’t understand why my wife and I are concerned. I think they will be shortly.
It’s going to get worse. We’re having a horrible drought here in Texas. I read today that the winter wheat crop is really bad and the ranchers are worrying about the cost of feeding their cattle in an extended drought.
Although droughts are far from uncommon here, this one is especially dire because we’ve already been hitting temperatures in the 90s, having incredibly high winds further drying out the soil, dealing with wild fires, and there is no change in the weather pattern in sight. An article iin yesterday’s paper compared our current conditions to wretched drought conditions in the mid ’60s.
I usually plant a vegetable garden to help out with my food budget but it simply wouldn’t make sense this year. We’re on water restriction and that will be tightened again soon, I’d imagine. It would cost me more in water, mulch, fertilizer, etc. to try to keep my veggies alive and the harvest wouldn’t be very good.
Reply to TeaTime2 (#3).
How about trying “trickle irrigation” or successful Israeli arid soil irrigation techniques?