Getting Hungry Yet?
Or are you just feeling broke? The price of wheat traditionally hovers around $3 to $7 per bushel. Things have changed recently. The price went up a bit in February. To $24 per bushel. That price has now subsided a bit - to a mere $18 per bushel last week. Prices for everything food related is skyrocketing - bigtime.
LUBBOCK, Texas - If you think the cost of gassing up your car is outrageous, wait until you need to restock your pantry.
The price of wheat has more than tripled during the past 10 months, making Americans' daily bread — and bagels and pizza and pasta — feel a little like luxury items. And baked goods aren't the only ones getting more expensive: Experts expect some 80 percent of grocery prices will spike, too, and could remain steep for years because wheat and other grains are used to feed cattle, poultry and dairy cows
"It's going to affect everything … impact on every section of the grocery store," said Michael Bittel, senior vice president of King Arthur Flour Co. in Norwich, Vt….
….The wheat market has been pushed higher by a combination of agricultural, financial and energy issues.
Poor wheat harvests in Australia and parts of Europe and the U.S. have caused China and other Asian countries to buy up more American crops, which are especially attractive because of the weak U.S. dollar.
At the same time, the American crop is shrinking because of federal incentives to grow corn for ethanol. And skyrocketing gas prices make it costlier to get any wheat to market. Those same pressures have also made it more expensive to supply feed grains for livestock.
This is not going to get better for a while, folks. The insane diversion of food into fuel will make this situation much, much worse. The high cost of fuel, meanwhile, will impact the price of food - and everything else that has to be transported to market. Which includes everything. Shopping on the internet will not save you, either - because what you buy there will still have to be transported to you - at exorbitant rates.
The green future has arrived - better have plenty of green to survive it.
Energy, Environment | Gaius Saturday, 15 March , 2008
By Gary Gulrud, Sunday, 16 March , 2008 @ 11:45 am
I no longer care about party affiliation or who the best candidate might be.
Vote the bum out!
By MikeM, Sunday, 16 March , 2008 @ 1:43 pm
Maybe it’s time to convert the rest of the back lawn into a wheat field. Or oats.
By Sam, Monday, 17 March , 2008 @ 4:37 pm
Another factor you didn’t mention is that as countries like China and India become more prosperous, their consumption of dairy products has been rising, putting further pressure on grain and diary prices.It will be interesting to see how farmers react to rising commodity prices. In this part of the country, a lot of irrigated farmland grows hay. I’m wondering if some of them will shift to wheat or corn.As for me, I have already started planting my garden - just veggies.