Food prices

Gracesmum there's a lot of profiteering in the commodities market - the prices of grain and seeds, etc are controlled by speculators and the big multinationals.

I don't think the weather has much to do with soaring prices - just an excuse.

I can't accept that - farmers and veg producers in the UK have really taken a hammering this year. Yield was down last year, harvest poor, veg farmers having real difficulty harvesting because of rain and flooding earlier in the Autumn/winter and now the snow. I saw the paucity of hedgerow fruits - bullace plums, damsons this summer compared to 2011 and I believe commercial fruit crops were well down too. Someone has to pay for it.

Internationally? Well that could be another matter.

I think food wastage is a massive problem, the figure of wastage is high which is quite worrying.

IMHO I do think that we are spoilt for choice and have perhaps forgotten to be appreciative.

You're right - fruit out of season - expensive and tasteless, BOGOF "offers" of which one probably gets chucked, and what I also hate is supermarket shelves with so many choices that you can't even find what you are looking for!

gracesmum is right. Riverwalk, If the stuff ain't there in the sheds, nobody can speculate.

You just have to look at the cost of potatoes to 6 months ago to see the way things will go.
I think we will find prices become prohibitive for us all, especially for some of the families who are struggling now to give their children the "5" a day recommended.

Oh yes they can. There is even a speculative market in potato futures - people buy up the crop in advance, before it is anywhere near ready, and get a profit on it. Not the farmers - the middlemen.

The futures speculation is often done before the crop is even planted but prices will soar even more if there is a poor harvest.

Ah, here's a nice gentle theme I can get my teeth into (literally?). The price of staple food items is rising rapidly. Being on a paupers budget, I have to take note of food pricing from day to day and notice the 'Reduced' food is almost being fought over in local supermarkets because the price of 'everyday food necessities', eg: spuds, flour, eggs, milk, bread...etc, have risen highly but slowly over the last few weeks/months, til even the wonderful superdooper OFFERS** we're being offered are in truth more expensive then they were two weeks previously. It's a quiet, frightening, insidious crawl towards them that can and afford it and them that can't..

I would be interested to check my supermarket receipts from a year ago and now- only I never keep them, all I know is that I get fewer bags for my buck, as it were.

Growing your own is not necessarily cheaper either although salad crops can easily be grown in a small space without much outlay.

Ooops, sorry, there shouldn't be an 'and' between 'can' and 'afford'

I haven't kept them either, gracesmum but I have started putting my food items together on the conveyer belt and asking for a sub total before putting anything else through. That way I can compare the food prices from week to week. If I can get to our local market on Thursdays I buy my veg there but the weather was so bad last week it was cancelled.

We have farming friends who haven't been able to harvest their potatoes at all this year.

I do my Asda shop online most weeks, and last week was about to tick the larger jar of Nescafe original, i.e. 300g rather than the 200g jar. Till I noticed, luckily, that whereas 200g is £4, 300g is the exorbitant price of £7.48! I wrote to Asda to complain, but no reply as yet.

I don't notice food prices because the S.O. does the food shopping; shops for the weekend and I eat what's left during the week. What I try to do is have a big bowl of porridge as a meal once a day and it fills me up so I don't have to eat a lot more. Although I did hear of a student that did that and his teeth dropped out [but he only ate porridge, for a long time]. Must be a nightmare for people with young children [or teenage boys when they're at the growing stage]. What I must do is cancel my milk from the milkman. I try to support things like that but the milk he delivers is incredibly expensive. Thankfully I was described by my ex FIL as an 'eat to live' person not a 'live to eat' one, although for some reason one thing I have wanted to do recently is to try different food [sushi, Thai and suchlike].

...Never ate meat but the price of vegs is frightening, even the humble swede is over £1 a pop at my local supermarket, didn't they, along with turnips and other root vegetables used to be cheap 'n' cheerful cow fodder?

I dont really notice individual prices, could not tell you how much a bag of sugar is.
But I do the shopping for my FIL and he buys the same thing week in and week out, not buying much as my SIL and I always plate another dinner up for him. His bill has gone up by approx 1/3.

I have stopped buying fruit and veg from the supermarket, I use the local greengrocer and I have found a big saving. But if I am in Aldi and they have what I want in their weekly veg specials I will take the offers.

And the government's attempt to stop us all binge drinking in our own homes means that the increase in a bottle (or more) of wine sends the weekly supermarket bill through the roof.

merlot I am sorry I couldn't possibly comment on that

Tegan my husband has porridge every morning for breakfast so one of my first experiments with my two new lads will be to see if they can cope with it too. Don't suppose it's something they've ever tried.

On a more general note; we have an allotment which costs us quite a bit of money for rental of the plot, upkeep, seeds etc. It's backbreakingly hard work from early spring, for the whole of the summer and into the beginning of November. Is it worth it? When I'm picking strawberries or mange tout - definitely! When I'm potting up my fortieth jar of jam - most certainly! When I'm filling my trug with an assortment of salad leaves - of course it's worth it!

When I'm looking at the devastation wrought by slugs, when I'm watering morning and evening, when I'm digging and hoeing the endless weeds...............when I count the cost in terms of time AND money.......

It's a labour of love, ga, We have a huge garden so it would be criminal not to grow our own. We grow for ourselves and DD and her two boys. We also keep them supplied with eggs. DH often asks if I bother to weigh up the costs. I don't because it would scare me to death.

Please don't cancel your milk delivery Tegan - it is his livelihood and it is the fault of the supermarkets that milk prices are kept articifially low at the expense of the dairy farmer. I know it costs a few pence more, but it is jolly convenient to have it onthe doorstep. We get ours from a local dairy farm and he delivers every other day. Yes the milk costs more but he also delivers fresh (*really fresh*) eggs at £1.70 a dozen (large) which is a lot less than the supermarket and they are local. If I could just organise myself, I would buy cleaning materials, dry goods etc from a supermarket or online to save petrol, meat from the butcher in the nearest town and veg towards the close of the weekly market 3 miles away when they are practically giving it away - "2 caulis for a pound, love!"
I would love to do the price comparison and also know that I was supprting local business.