[jdmartin]

Anyone who's posting that food is getting cheaper must be buying some shitty food.

We buy almost *no* processed foods at all - and the price of real, regular food has skyrocketed in the past 3 years. Since I don't buy it, I'm unsure, but yeah maybe it's cheap to buy a plastic bottle full of high-fructose corn syrup chemical water, or a frozen package of lab engineered corpo-farmed quasi-chicken nuggets, but if you go buy the *real* chicken - not the one that's been frozen and shipped to China for processing ala Wallyworld - you'll see that prices are quite a bit higher than they were a few years ago.

My house spends about 20% of take-home pay on food. I know this because I keep a detailed budget every month. Very, very little of that is spent outside the house at restaurants - 90% is on regular bought, non-processed food. I have no idea if that's cheap, or expensive, compared with the past, but I do know that it's cheaper to eat Ramen Noodles than Broccoli. You can eat a shitload of ramen noodles for every head of broccoli you can buy. We eat meat at dinner probably 5 out of 7 days per week, so if we ate a little less meat we could trim that number slightly - however, that meat makes 2 meals, since it's only part of a dish and not the dish - like spaghetti with meat, or chicken, vegetables and rice, etc. The leftovers end up being the following day's lunch. I'm too damn stingy with my money to be tossing out food. Scraps are composted for the garden.

It's really no wonder poor(er) people in the US are fat, and getting fatter - the quality of the food they can afford to buy is piss-poor.

[frankthetank]

JD-

Its probably a local thing here. Food is cheap in Wisconsin. I think its because the people are so fat, they demand low prices. If you haven't been to a Woodman's, you haven't been to a grocery store. It makes the SuperWalmart across the street look expensive and they sell EVERYTHING. The cheese aisle alone is worthy of a picture.

I don't eat crap. I eat about 80% organic food and only grass fed meat. I also eat fish, but nothing farm raised. I guess i do eat wild game too (venison).

[Ludi]

It's really no wonder poor(er) people in the US are fat, and getting fatter - the quality of the food they can afford to buy is piss-poor.

I agree with you but

it looks like from what folks like MarkJ say, if food were more expensive, the poor people would eat better and not be fat.

Or something.

[Revi]

We should remember this time, when the poor are fat. They may not be so fat in a few years.

We may all remember fondly the time when you could buy a big bag of cheezits and wash it down with a fizzy corn syrup and caffeine drink for a buck and a half at Sam's Club.

[JJ]

...we did have a run on rice a couple of years ago, and the rice disappeared from the shelves.

I perfectly remember where I was 2 years ago, and 3 years ago too, and I cannot remember a rice shortage, whether short, prolonged or otherwise. Maybe in your neck of the woods, tho.

We had one here - same time - maybe 2 years ago? Even Costco was cleaned out. If you hit 2 or 3 grocery stores you'd find a couple bags eventually

-G

we eat jasmin rice, which we buy in Austin at the asian "super-store" (100,000 sq. feet). They had a limit on how many bags you could buy. I think it was 2 25 pound bags. Bing said rice went up three dollars a sack last week.

[Roy]

Anyone who's posting that food is getting cheaper must be buying some shitty food.

Like you I see the same thing. Quality food isn't getting any cheaper. Even dried beans have gone up.

I notice a lot of foods, the packaging keeps shrinking but the price stays the same.

Example: 2 years ago, a 16 oz pack of whole wheat spaghetti was 99¢.

Now a 12 oz container (same brand) is $1.49 on sale. That's almost double.

[JJ]

Many people are spending much less on food these days, but primarily since they're not buying, trading down, shopping at 4/5/6 different stores for the lowest prices, using coupons, buying loss leaders, making fewer impulse purchases, eating out less and ordering less.

Lower food prices at most all stores is just the icing on the free or subsidized cake.

@ Ludi.... I'm going to try to explain how I see this.... the Grocery I work at (hugely enormous big store) is taking tens of millions of dollars loss, so you go into the store and buy blackberries that I am paying 1.50 a pint for for .69 cents or five pounds of white potatoes that I am paying 2.00 for for .99 cents or strawberries that I am paying 3.05 for for 1.50. These are not just loss leaders, thousands of products in the store are like this. Since profits are so bad, they are slashing hours and getting rid of employees through attrition. Eventually we will have to get rid of most of the rest of the employees AND raise prices in order to keep the doors open. Since we are using our 2010 vacation time now to make our 40 (36) hours, I'm apprehensive to see what happens when we run out of vacation time. I was just going to work here for a couple of months until something else came along...(ten years ago)

[Thralen]

Maybe it is a local thing, but our local Safeway (one of the two flagship stores for the chain) recently dropped their prices on every one of their own generics as well as many of the major brands. I'll note that their own generics are mostly made in the USA and the quality is good so I buy a fair amount of them. Anyhow, I shop for a family of four on $100 a week, probably my average weekly food bill (the food portion only) is in the $60-$70 range, the rest is accounted for with cleaning products, hygiene products, and spending money for myself, etc... We always purchase some fresh produce as part of our groceries, mostly 'local' (read as grown in our own state) and still manage to keep the budget low.

This recent price drop is rather dramatic in some cases and they are 'permanent price reductions' not just sales. A few examples are:
Generic Frozen french fries (my two daughter love them): $3.59 -> $2.50
Generic mini-wheat cereal: $2.59 -> $1.88
Their generic non-condensed soups: $1.59->$1.24
etc...

These aren't even the biggest price drops, just the ones I recently purchased and could remember the prices from before the price drop. In the produce section, the regular prices aren't dropping but the sale prices are going lower than they used to.

I'm not complaining much here, I like being able to feed the family inexpensively. I'll admit part of the reason that I can do so cheaply is that I cook, a lot. Of the 21 meals eaten by our family every week, my wife cooks 7 (she does breakfast for the kids) and I do 14. We might eat out once a month, and the rest is cooked at home. In the summer our food expenditure drops even further as most of our produce comes from our own gardens. Even so, food prices are quite low. Back in '96 I shopped for my wife and myself for $30-$35 a week and we had no garden for fresh produce. Adding our gardening efforts in now indicate that, at least in my area, food price increases over the past 14-15 years have been minuscule. Knowing that inflation has not been minuscule tells me that something is up to keep food prices artificially low.

Thralen

[frankthetank]

Just about every number was a grim one for Wisconsin farmers in 2009, particularly in dairy.

The just-released “Status of Wisconsin Agriculture 2010” reports that farm income plummeted 56 percent to $1.1 billion, the lowest since 2002.

“2009 was a lousy year. 2010 will be better,” said Ed Jesse, emeritus professor of agricultural and applied economics at UW-Madison and an editor of the report. “The question is if it will be good enough to make up for the losses, particularly among dairy farmers, that were incurred in 2009.”

Livestock producers saw low product prices and high feed prices. Crop farmers faced weather challenges in first planting and then harvesting of corn and soybeans.

The worst off, however, were the dairy farmers, who saw record-low prices. The state’s all-milk price hovered around $13 per hundredweight and dropped as low as $9, down from a record $19.27 the year before. Low export demand, lower domestic demand due to the recession and high production numbers all contributed to the decline.

“The price recovered and is stabilizing,” Jesse said.

The report’s authors expect a 2010 all-milk price around $17.50, up $4.50 from last year.

Despite the late corn harvest, the crop was bountiful throughout the U.S. and in Wisconsin. While some corn remains in Wisconsin fields, the forecast is at 423 million bushels, up by 29 million bushels, and a record yield of 153 bushels per acre.

U.S. soybean yields and total crop size are expected to set records this year, and Wisconsin’s 2009 crop of 67 million bushels was up 20 percent from 2008.

The report’s prospects for 2010 include cheaper fertilizer, continued low credit costs but tighter loan qualification standards and less money to loan, lower meat production and consumption but higher exports, and holding prices for corn and soybeans. The dairy forecast includes reduced milk production due to a shrinking herd, growth in domestic consumption and stronger exports.

The status of state agriculture will be the topic of a conference Wednesday at the Pyle Center, At the time of last year’s conference, Jesse said, milk prices had begun their plunge, and there was much uncertainty about state agriculture, and it turned out worse than most expected.

“While 2009 was grim, I think there’s a lot more optimism right now than there was a year ago at this time,” he said.

http://host.madison.com/wsj/business/ar ... 7ac1c.html

Nice thing about living here, while winters SUCK, we do have good soil, plentiful rainfall and good summer growing conditions. I think this state could grow a lot more food if it wanted to.

[shortonsense]

Florida loses 70% of Winter veggies. I would think fruits
like strawberries are gone as well. And:

In this reality, the US farmers have suffered the worst harvest season ever seen.

Certainly not in corn.

Most corn since 1949!! Abundance in food...tis good!

"U.S. grain corn production is estimated at a record 13.2 billion bushels, up 2 per cent from the Nov. 1 forecast, and 1 per cent above the previous record of 13.0 billion bushels set in 2007. The U.S. grain yield is estimated at a record165.2 bushels per acre, 4.9 bushels above the previous record of 160.3 bushels/acre. Mild temperatures through much of the growing season, combined with adequate soil moisture, provided favorable growing conditions and grain development. The 86.5 million acres of corn planted represents the second largest acreage since 1949."

http://www.portagedailygraphic.com/Arti ... ?e=2271740

[MarkJ]

it looks like from what folks like MarkJ say, if food were more expensive, the poor people would eat better and not be fat.

Or something.

The opposite is true, as people tend to consume unhealthy calories as food prices increase.

As food has become more expensive people are trading down from steak to hamburger, lean hamburger, to high fat hamburger, chicken breast to batter coated mechanically reclaimed meat, lean cold cuts to high fat cold cuts, hearty multi-grain breads to cheap white bread, cooked meals to processed frozen foods, expensive subs and sandwiches to 99 cent double cheeseburgers etc.

People are able to maintain, or even increase calorie consumption due to trading down, comparison shopping at 4/5/6 stores in addition to supplementing their incomes or expenses with numerous benefits.

The Troubles at Kroger: Frugal Consumers

"The operating environment has proven to be more difficult than we expected," said David Dillon, Kroger's chairman and chief executive, during a conference call on Tuesday. "We came up short." He cited deflation, cautious shoppers and a surge in competition in explaining the company's weaker-than-anticipated results. Price wars and promotional activity escalated as "more of our competitors expanded to more of the markets we serve," he said. At the same time, customers were buying down and spending less, he added.

Grocery retailers — Supervalu and Kroger in particular — began slashing prices in the spring in an effort to lure cash-conscious shoppers into their stores, says Mushkin. "People have been trading down aggressively — from sirloin steak to hamburger — which affects grocery sales," he says, and many consumers are actively price-shopping for individual items.

Mushkin believes the sector's recovery ultimately hinges on jobs. "We need the unemployment rate to start falling," he says. "You can't have people shopping at four different stores to get the best price for a single item — they need to get back to work and convenience needs to trump price" for grocery retailers to see a significant rebound.

People with limited incomes can also eliminate or reduce spending in other areas to free up more money for food. For example, they could eliminate or reduce spending on beer, liquor, cigarettes, scratch-off tickets, take-out, delivery, rent-to-own furniture/appliances/electronics, tattoos, tanning, clothes, jewelry, piercings, cable television, internet, cell phones, pre-paid cellular minutes, pets, pet food, litter, taxis, transit lines etc.

[deMolay]

Enough grain to feed 330 million folk for one year is turned into gasoline in USA each year. http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/ ... arelease6/

[Pretorian]

Can you imagine how cheap food would be if they werent doing it.

[mcgowanjm]

Florida loses 70% of Winter veggies. I would think fruits
like strawberries are gone as well. And:

In this reality, the US farmers have suffered the worst harvest season ever seen.

Certainly not in corn.

Most corn since 1949!! Abundance in food...tis good!

"U.S. grain corn production is estimated at a record 13.2 billion bushels, up 2 per cent from the Nov. 1 forecast, and 1 per cent above the previous record of 13.0 billion bushels set in 2007. The U.S. grain yield is estimated at a record165.2 bushels per acre, 4.9 bushels above the previous record of 160.3 bushels/acre. Mild temperatures through much of the growing season, combined with adequate soil moisture, provided favorable growing conditions and grain development. The 86.5 million acres of corn planted represents the second largest acreage since 1949."

http://www.portagedailygraphic.com/Arti ... ?e=2271740

And here's where I say the gov't/USDA is lying.

Notice in your quote that the USDA never talks about
the harvest of this great crop.

10 MMT of that record crop is still in the field and being
counted as a crop.

1/2 US Ag Counties are declared disaster areas.

To qualify for FEMA Disaster:

Scott Soares, commissioner of the state Department of Agriculture, said feed corn, strawberries and tobacco had all witnessed crop reductions of greater than 30 percent - the criterion used by the federal government to determine loan eligibility. Yet no crop saw the damage experienced by tobacco, Soares said.

For Czajkowski, whose family has farmed tobacco since the early 1900s, it is a level of destruction he has never seen.

"This is rare. We have had other years where we lost part of the crop, but there was never a year when we lost the whole thing," Czajkowski said Tuesday. "More importantly, we have never seen a year when the whole Valley didn't cut anything."

The tobacco debacle was a primary reason behind the U.S. Department of Agriculture's announcement Monday that Massachusetts farmers could obtain federal loans to help cover their crop losses. Ten of the state's 14 counties, including Berkshire, Franklin, Hampshire and Hampden, were declared primary natural disaster areas.

The Worst Harvest Ever, and the USDA says it's a record.

[VMarcHart]

Most corn since 1949!! Abundance in food...tis good!

Ah, the positivism is a breath of fresh air. Never mind what that corn is made of, how it was made, what's the end consumer of that corn. The fields are full and that's what counts. Nice!