Food prices to go through the roof

[Workingman]

So say experts.

They blame the combination of bad weather, political conflict and increased consumption by a growing population for pushing up the price of everything from cabbage to caviar.

What they do not mention, not even a hint, is the part the money men - speculators and spivs - play in food prices.

Crops and animals are bought and sold many times before they are sown or born, all based on their potential market price. every little twist or turn in the weather or politics creates the possibility of a sale; and in that process the dealers all make 'loadsa' money regardless of the eventual outcome.

I wonder how much of the money I spent on a few carrots and onions I bought today went to some spiv at a computer and how much to the farmer?

[victor]

when my b-i-l's family had a cold store in Romford ,he often said that meat could/would change hands a dozen times without actually leaving the store

[KateLMead]

Is that why Sainsbury',t big contributor to the Labour Party (close friends of BLiar ) has finally got open approval to import and grow GM foods Here, all kept very quiet

[saundra]

it just gets worse
i dont buy meat very often now
to roast
only when family come
but i do prefer light meals these days really
salad and stuff
and i dont buy junk food
i cant believe what i see in some trollys they seem piled high with junk

[Aggers]

I can't believe what I see in some trolleys - they seem piled high with junk

You can usually guess what their trolley contains before they get close enough to see - just by looking at their figure !!!

Perhaps a drastic rise in food prices might help the fight against obesity, and perhaps it will also encourage people to
spend their money sensibly. (but I doubt it).

[Workingman]

Watching a programme last night we were told that corn had gone from $80 a tonne to $220 a tonne and that almost 50% of the crop goes to produce biofuel. Corn use to be the staple feed of the livestock industry, including poultry.

It is obviously more important to keep cars running than to keep food affordable, so despite advances in production techniques the cost of food, as a percentage of earnings, is rising to that of the immediate post war period. And let us not forget that the globe has a lot more mouths to feed than just after the war.

[cromwell]

There are lots of reasons for the price of food going up I suppose; but yes spivs will be in there somewhere.
Some of this is green 'gesture' politics. We are growing stuff to convert into ethanol; the ethanol will be used to dilute petrol. Atm petrol is 5% ethanol. However the EU has led a push to increase this to 10%. The 10% stuff will be appearing in forecourts in the next couple of years.
Why put ethanol into petrol? Because it burns cleaner than petrol. Hooray! Ah but. Ethanol produces 30% less power than does petrol, so you don't get the same mpg with 10% ethanol petrol because you are using more of it... Ooops.
We are also growing biomass plants to burn in power stations. it burns cleaner. Hooray! Only... it doesn't go very far. My mate Dave used to work in the power generating industry and told me that a big field of biomass would last approx 10 seconds at the power station. Ooops...

But the main reason imo is - a bigger and bigger population. We don't grow enough food now in the UK to feed our population. With massive immigration comes more house building, which means more fields built on which means even less land to grow our food. A bigger and bigger population is supported and encouraged by the big three political parties on 'economic' grounds.

So can't we buy food from abroad? Yes we can and yes we do; but there is going to be increased competition for the available food. Which is why China has leased massive areas of land in South America, Asia, Africa and the Ukraine to grow food for it's own population.

We haven't. Our politicians believe that GM crops will ride to our rescue. We'll see.