Rising food costs

Since about 2007 I'd been reading a lot about soaring food prices worldwide, and none of it had corresponded to what I'd observed in my own life. Back in 2008, at the height of the hubbub of rising prices, I saw only a few changes, the only specific one I remember being a gallon of organic milk notching up a few dimes at the grocer down the street. Then commodity prices peaked later that year, deflation set in, and the price of organic milk dropped back to normal.

Again I'm hearing a lot about rising food prices, again corresponding with rising energy prices, and again I'm hearing how “soon Americans will be feeling the pinch like the rest of the world.” This time, however, I'm seeing those price increases firsthand. It's no longer just news; it's now real life. Indeed, it seems like everything on the grocery store shelves are notching up these days.

Partly this has to do with how I just finished shopping at Fry's tonight. I'll be honest here; I despise Fry's. I despise their gimmicks like member cards, coupons, and weekly price fluctuations. I despise their self-checkout system. I despise how they charge twice as much as their competitors do for natural peanut butter and extra virgin olive oil. I despise how they charge twice as much for steel cut oats as they themselves charge for rolled oats. It's the same oat! What gives?

But it's not just tonight's visit to the evil grocer down the street that has me observing rising food prices firsthand. I figure I'm one of the first Americans in line to be directly touched by rising food prices because I eat out infrequently and I rarely eat prepared foods. Most of what I eat I cook: oatmeal from bulk oats, rice and beans, eggs and toast, and so on. I don't cook fancy or complicated meals, just quick and easy ones using simple, cheap ingredients. As such, most of my food costs are going towards the food, not its marketing, packaging, and preparation. Prepared foods like cold cereal and ready-to-eat meals like those in the freezer section have only a portion of their cost based on the cost of their constituent ingredients, so their prices are more insulated from food-price inflation. Whereas, when the price of raw ingredients doubles, then my grocery bill nearly doubles.

So where is this going?