Food Prices Have Climbed 30 Percent in the Past Year

In the past few months, skyrocketing food prices have raised concern among economists and anti-hunger advocates—and rising food costs have even helped foment revolutions. This week, the World Bank reported that food prices increased 15 percent from October to January and have climbed 30 percent in the past year. Currently, the bank's price index sits just 3 percent below its 2008 record. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization keeps a separate index of food costs—and it blew past the all-time record last month. Wheat prices have doubled since last summer. The price of corn has risen about 75 percent since June. Prices for sugar and cooking oils have also jumped. The consequences are potentially devastating. The World Bank says that spiraling food costs have driven 44 million people into extreme poverty since June 2010. - The Invisible Food Crisis, Slate.com, February 17, 2011

There are about three billion people around the globe that live on the equivalent of two dollars a day or less. Those people cannot afford for food prices to go up much. Coincidentally (or not) three billion people is about 1/4 of the world's population -- the amount of people that will die by war, scarcity, famine, diseases, plagues, etc. at the opening of the first four seals.

One Solution to Rising Food Prices: Grow Your Own!

May 8, 2011

Pittsburgh Post Gazette - J. P. Morgan, the celebrated financier, famously observed,

"If you have to ask the price, you can't afford it."

I've always viewed this quote as a sort of anti-proverb along the lines of "you can't be too rich or too thin" and "living well is the best revenge" -- members-only bromides to comfort the comfortable and disconcert everybody else.

Morgan made his famous utterance when asked about the cost of maintaining his yacht. But he might as well have been referring to old-master paintings, gems, mansions or railroads -- all of which he acquired in abundance. I doubt the plutocrat was thinking of the cost of purchasing fresh tomatoes, red peppers or lettuce.

But even J.P. might have paused at the prices on view in today's grocery produce aisle.

"Surely, you jest," I imagine him thundering. "What species of priceless vegetables might these be? Virtuoso Faberge fancies? A still life by the Flemish master Martinus Nellius? At these mad prices, include me out!"

As I write, U.S. prices of fruits and vegetables are rising at an alarming rate.

Amazingly, as recently as January the government's Economic Research Office and the U.S. Department of Agriculture confidently estimated a modest rise in U.S. grocery prices -- a mere 2 percent to 3 percent, up from the .8 percent increase in U.S. food prices from 2009 to 2010.

The estimated increase was hardly likely to precipitate howls of outrage from TV talking heads or have editorial writers pummeling their keyboards to produce fevered polemics. So, no worries, right?

Wrong. Apparently government accountants had turned in their iconic green eyeshades for rose-colored glasses.

The Associated Press reported that February's jump in wholesale food prices, 7.3 percent, represented the biggest annual increase since November 1974.

The government economists had overlooked a few variables.

Take corn, an obvious factor. For starters, there were Iowa's unseasonably warm nights last July, causing the corn crop to mature too early, resulting in diminished output and higher prices.

With rising gas prices, there is increased demand for corn-based ethanol -- which already accounts for 12.5 percent of U.S. corn production -- again lifting prices. And corn reserves are the lowest they've been in more than 15 years.

As oil prices skyrocket, the worst is yet to come.

Also, let's not forget weather's impact on global food output. The last year has seen a perfect storm of storms. Devastating droughts and floods in Australia and Russia. Floods in Canada. Low rainfall in Europe and South America. Excessive rain in India. Record-shattering winter freezes in California, Mexico and Florida.

No wonder global food prices rose 30 percent over the past year -- the biggest jump since the United Nations started tracking food costs in 1990.

Up to now, the United States has been insulated from the more extreme food price gyrations. For one thing, Americans spend only 10 percent of their income on food, while in less developed countries food costs devour 50 percent of family budgets. Americans have another advantage: World food prices are reckoned in dollars and our country remains the world's leading food producer.

Still, take the briefest stroll through your local grocery and you'll see that food prices are exploding. Produce prices have doubled in some parts of the country.

Fresh fruit and vegetable prices are the most volatile. That's because many foods in supermarket aisles are more processed food products than food per se. They are manufactured rather than grown in a field. Reckoned in real dollars, the prices of fresh fruits and vegetables have more than doubled since 1980 relative to other grocery items, which have budged only a little.

What's the sticker-shocked consumer to do? The answer is right in your own backyard. The savings you can realize by starting your own home garden would astonish you.

Consider tomatoes. Right now, medium-sized tomatoes at my local grocery are priced from 90 cents to $1.30. A single tomato plant in your home garden will, at a conservative estimate, produce 40 to 50 medium-to-large fruit in a summer -- a bounty that would set you back anywhere from $36 to $65 at the supermarket.

It gets better. A seed packet contains 25 guaranteed seeds out of 30 total. Set the average plant yield at $45, then multiply it by 25. Your little tomato patch yields more than $1,000 worth of store-bought tomatoes from a seed packet that costs you three or four dollars. Your return on investment? 320,000 percent! J. P. Morgan would not pass up that kind of opportunity.

Tomatoes are not alone. Home gardeners can reap extraordinary savings on every fruit and vegetable. Your garden of bargains produces a healthy harvest of culinary pleasure, serenely wholesome recreation and out-of-this-world savings. As J. P. might put it.

"If you have to ask the price, grow your own."