Common Cuisine |

How is world news affecting you these days? I try not to pay too much attention, because I have a vacant house for sale in this faltering economy. I have tried to limit my reading of the newspaper, at least until that gets resolved. The only thing to be accomplished by reading all about the mortgage crisis and the impending recession is to get me uptight about a situation that is out of my control for the moment.

But there is something going on that I cannot ignore. Have you noticed yet how the news of what’s going on “out there” is starting to be reflected in your monthly expenses? We recently moved to a different region of the country, at which time I made the switch to organics for meat, dairy, and some select produce. To me this explained the significant increase in my weekly grocery bill. But as I have begun looking longingly back at the ordinary apples and milk in hopes of saving a few dollars, I am not seeing as much of a price spread as I remember. What happened when I wasn’t looking?

It seems that food prices globally are responding to increasing pressure from multiple sources: Severe weather in Australia and Argentina, among other places, has diminished supply, at a time when producers’ reserves are down, due to increased standards of living in the huge countries of China and India.

In addition, as oil prices continue their stiff climb, higher fuel cost leads to higher production and transportation cost, which gets factored into the end cost, which consumers pay. To help counteract the fuel factor, some of our usual sources of food have been reallocated to become fuel resources. But now higher corn and soybean prices are increasing the price of feed, which in turn increases the price of poultry, meat and dairy products. The summers when we could buy twelve ears of corn for a dollar, or even two, are gone.

To put the squeeze from yet another direction, our US economy is in a fragile situation, if you believe the news. Falling interest rates mean higher inflation, which means your money buys less than it did not too long ago. Natural gas and electricity are increasing in cost due to a shortage of supply; home prices are falling due to a culture of poor lending practices among the mortgage industry, finally correcting itself.

And all of those factors are being reflected in the bottom line on my grocery receipt, which according to some research reflects a five percent increase over last year. The painful realization is that many staple items such as milk, eggs, beef and wheat have increased between 25 and 50%.

The natural principle at work here is that economy is built on a balance between supply and demand. Prices of products are always fluctuating; sometimes there is a bit more supply, sometimes a bit more demand. In an ideal capitalistic economy, demand will slightly outpace supply. Right now, the equation is unbalanced with too much demand for food resources, and a food supply that has been globally diminished on multiple fronts.

The good news is, the equation will naturally right itself, sooner or later. Growers will increase their production of needed crops, because with more demand they can get paid more for growing them. Governments will eventually change policy to encourage greater production in areas of need. Higher cost of transportation may lead us to increase consumption of locally grown produce and goods, as well as take the step into more fuel-efficient vehicles. If critical markets slide or crash, perhaps that will bring a relief to the high price of oil (which still seems to mystify those of us outside the oil industry as to its true cause). Long term, there are good results to come from this imbalance.

In the meantime, it is time to take action. What are you doing to protect your family budget at the grocery? In the next few weeks I will be discussing responsible and effective ways we can make our food budget stretch to the max.