Rising food prices are hitting consumers where it hurts most - in the pocket. If it's any consolation, we're not alone. Nick Gulhane has been looking at the global cost of food
There used to be a stigma attached to buying supermarket 'economy range' products. The garishly designed blue and white cans or plain white packs with nothing to entice the eye used to scream 'poor person' to me. But now, like thousands of other shoppers, I'm thinking: 'Do I actually need to pay four times as much for one type of tinned tomatoes if I’m only going to chuck it in a bolognaise?'.
Food is becoming more expensive - there's plenty of stats to tell us that - but it’s not going to stop me buying my little luxuries; pickled lemons, for example. Food purchases make up a relatively small proportion of my outgoings compared to other things such as transport, entertainment, clothes and, if I'm honest, I don't really know how much I spend on food per week.
Bread - a lot of dough
If I were living in other parts of Europe I'd be paying much greater attention. Take our daily bread, for example. Figures from the Economist's Intelligence Unit's Cost of Living Survey, revealed Manchester was one of the cheapest places to buy a loaf of bread; £1.11 as opposed to £1.84 in Lisbon. Vienna came in with the most pricey loaf, at an impossible sounding £4.44, followed by Moscow and Seoul, with Pretoria the cheapest at 55p.
There are all sorts of reasons why food prices differ between countries, economic policy or reliance on oil, for example. A recent publication from Eurostat showed that from April 2007 to April 2008 food prices went up by 7.1 per cent; higher than the general rate of inflation. The worst hit countries tend to be Europe's new member states, like Bulgaria, Latvia and Romania, where food prices have shot up by around 20 per cent.
Even in Spain there are serious rumblings of discontent amoung voters. The Spanish spend a much greater proportion of their income on food. They are also susceptible to increasing commodity prices for grains, particularly wheat, because they have to import a lot of it. This means that bread is much more expensive but so are meat and dairy products since animal feed prices have rocketed. Overall the inflation rate in Spain is about 4.4 per cent, but figures from the Agriculture Ministry show that the cost of milk is up by 29 per cent and chicken by 16 per cent.
Meanwhile in America, as usual, everything seems bigger and cheaper. Prices have risen but, according to colleagues living in the States, fuel cost is of more concern to consumers than grocery prices.
| Food | US Safeway | UK Sainsbury |
|---|---|---|
| Eggs, 12 large | $2.49 (£1.25) | £2.10 (for 10) |
| Whole milk, 1 gallon (3.75l) | $3.99 (£2) | £2.12 (3.4l) |
| Rice, white long grain, 2lb (906g) | $1.53 (£0.76) | £1.34 |
| Orange juice 0.5 gallon (1.89l) | $2.50 (£1.25) | £1.76 (2l) |
| Chicken, with bone, 1lb (453g) | $1.89 (£0.95) | £2.11 (640g, thighs) |
How much you notice food is becoming more expensive generally depends upon how much you earn. According to Dr Nick Minot of the International Food Policy Research Institute, price rises have a massive effect on the poor.
Rice - cheaper calories
"In developing countries, people spend between 50 and 70 per cent of their budget on food. In the US it's less than ten per cent. The countries that are most affected are those that import lots of food, like Bangladesh."
If you haven't got much money then there's one other thing you don't have – choice.
"A poor household will switch from expensive items, like dairy or fruits and vegetables, to staples, like rice, because they are cheaper sources of calories. The risk is they then run the risk of micronutrient deficiencies."
And when people get hungry, they get angry. This year has seen rioting in Latin America, Africa and Asia. In March, Philippine president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, made a personal appeal to the Vietnamese prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, to guarantee supplies of rice. In April, the Haitian prime minister, Jacques-Édouard Alexis, was sacked after five people were killed in food related incidents and just a few days ago the Mexican government was forced into fixing prices with food suppliers in the hope of at least a few months respite from protesters.
The cost of staples may be rising in the UK but people aren't starving in Tunbridge Wells yet - and there haven't been food riots in Britain since the mid nineteenth century. The underlying cause of course has been the rising price of oil and, as yet, there's no sign of it coming down.
The credit crunch at home - How it's affecting the man on the street and Britain's chefs
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