Excluding gasoline, headline inflation would have been 4.0% in June, following a 4.4% increase in May.
Canadians continued to see elevated grocery prices (+9.1%) and mortgage interest costs (+30.1%) in June, with those indexes contributing the most to the headline CPI increase.
The all-items excluding food index rose 1.7% and the all-items excluding mortgage interest cost index rose 2.0%.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/230718/dq230718a-eng.htm?HPA=1
Boy that grocery inflation sure is sticky. Almost like the cause is located within the industry itself and not a factor being forced upon it externally.
It’s almost like food is something everyone needs and has to buy no matter the cost, so there’s no incentive for grocery stores to reduce their profit margins.
Competition/survival is the only incentive to reduce profit margins. Co-ops have no profit incentive.
This, seemingly inevitable, position was a long term strategy from consolidated major players with a history of collision.
Immediate steps you can take to help:
-
If there is a co-op grocery option near you, join it. Second best is a local grocer. (Unpacking the supply chains is another beast…)
-
Join a CSA / buy direct from farms. Avoid imported foods to the extent possible.
-
Write you MP and MPP to support the removal of taxes on seeds and seedlings for food products, a tax that benifts major players and hurts non-profit growers.
-
Grow some food, share it with your friends/family. Either on your own property or, for us condoites, community gardens.
Second best is a local grocer.
Yeah I shop at my local Asian supermarket. Family run, and so much cheaper than the nearby Loblaws or even the farther No Frills.
Join a CSA / buy direct from farms.
Sounds good but I can get all my groceries from Walmart and have next day delivery for like $7. I would love to ditch Walmart, but not having a car makes me value the logistics a lot.
The massive chains are always the cheapest in town. Until they’re the only ones in town, then the prices rise. This is the strategy, they kill local businesses then set the prices.
I appreciate the choice many be difficult for you as an individual, but appreciate you are making the wrong choice. I need, and sometimes just want, to make bad choices too.
That’s harsh. But also rings true. I’ll try looking around for CSA nearby again, thanks for the nudge.
Some CSAs will deliver weekly, which may help.
Look up “farm boxes” or “farm co-ops” in your area.
My brother lives in the city but get a big box of local produce delivered weekly. It’s really cheap too for how much he gets. I’m pretty sure the program is just called “local farm box” or something like that.
I mean, have you reached out to your local farms/CSA groups to inquire about delivery and encourage them to establish something like that? The pandemic definitely pushed a lot of groups to incorporate that into their model, if you haven’t checked recently you might be surprised. I mean, even if it’s just to demonstrate interest for a pick up point in your area or ask if they’re affiliated with a local supplier who does deliver, it never hurts to reach out
I do think one of them has a pick up point at least, none offer delivery, but I’ll have see if I’ll be able to make that work with a small bicycle basket at a time late enough for me to go after work. I’m also afraid of committing to cycle a few extra kilometers every week with the added weight, but we’ll see.
You don’t find that the fruits and vegetables from Walmart expire so much faster than from other grocery stores? It’s especially bad when we had it delivered by instacart because they just didn’t care and would grab the first thing they see rather than pick through it like I would. And of course that’s what you expect because they’re not the ones eating it.
Some CSAs do home delivery. They are great where they exist, but CSAs cannot scale enough to impact this problem.
-
I suspect the prices will, ironically, allow new players to enter the market and undercut.
I have farmers in my family. They talk about the pieces they got last year (high) versus this year (much lower). In fact, it’s leading to some unethical optimization problems…
Crop insurance payouts are based on last year’s price. For some farmers, they would earn more this year if they sabotaged their own crops and took the insurance payout based on last year’s prices.
My family rejects it, cause ethics is a thing. But I suspect some farmers will just see dollars and will artificially constrain their supply. And the rest of the farmers will have their insurance rates increase.
I
N
T
E
G
R
A
T
I
O
N
but no, no greedflation here
The problem with groceries is that the raw product is largely bought on futures contracts, so you’re paying last year’s price. Last year was inflated due to fertilizer issues and general concern around the Ukraine conflict. The raw product price is now down ~50% since last year, but it will take until next year to see that show up in the store.
but it will take until next year to see that show up in the store.
I really wish I wasn’t so jaded. I can’t bring myself to believe that. Hope I’m wrong.
Every year I’m grateful I don’t have to worry about gasoline or mortgage interest.
I just have to worry about my
feudalland lord wanting to renovict me to catch up with his rising mortgage and SUV costs.Canadians continued to see elevated grocery prices (+9.1%)
I don’t know about anyone else, but it’s been a minimum 30% increase for food, and I’ve seen upwards of 200%+ for groceries we used to be able to afford.
I wonder if it’s because of what they are including in their percentages. Like, if meat, cheese, eggs, and produce skyrocketed, but a ton of processed garbage didn’t, then it’ll make the numbers look lower than it is in practice.
Yeah, that’s entirely possible!
Yes, a grocery store contains thousands of items, and as always, inflation hits the necessities worst, and luxuries the least (because demand for the latter is “elastic”).
Yeah, the grocery bill has been insane this past year.
There needs to be services that directly connect farmers with consumers. The grocery store serves as a middleman that’s honestly become rather useless given that many people use another middleman (Instacart, etc.) to actually get their groceries.
I’m open to building one and have a decent way of organizing logistics, but I have no idea how to reach out to farmers (who to reach out to, for what crops, and who is getting the most exploited by grocery stores).
For some industries you can’t do this because of regulatory capture.
For example dairy. Dairy farmers are not allowed to sell to anyone except the cooperative, who does all the processing and then sells to stores. Since the dairy cartel is in bed with the grocery cartel, good luck breaking in.
Also fo meat, any meat sold in Canada must be inspected at a federal abbatoire. Guess who owns the abbatoires? The big guys, and they’re not going to sell to you because the beef cartel is in bed with the grocery cartel.
That can’t be universally true - you can buy meat from independent farms. Maybe you’re correct about logistics at scale, but at the individual farm level, you can definitely purchase meat.
at the individual farm level, you can definitely purchase meat.
Yes, unless it is poultry, in which case it is much like dairy (with an exemption for hobby-scale farms). Although the abbatoire problem remains, and good luck finding an abbatoire these days.
I buy turkey directly from an organic farm like 10 minutes away from my house…
No doubt, but are they breaking the law, or is the flock small enough to be within the exemption?
I don’t know, you didn’t link any laws or anything in your initial comment
Well, how many birds do they keep?
Hm, so that means if we switch from dairy to plant based milks and reduce our beef consumption, that should temper our expenses. I don’t think our family is ready to go full vegetarian though. What is the situation with chicken and pork?
Poultry is supply managed, much like dairy. That said, tiny scale poultry farmers are exempted from needing quota, so as an individual you can likely find someone to buy direct from.
Pork, like beef, is open season. You may struggle to find a butcher legally available, however. They are booked up years at a time.
Look up “Community Supported Agriculture” or CSAs. You typically buy a “share” at the start of the growing season and pick up a bunch of fresh, locally-grown, seasonal produce each week, or every-other week.
The Lufa model needs to spread across the country. They have a handful of urban greenhouses in Montreal, so a lot of the produce I buy is actually grown in the city, and everything else that they can’t grow themselves is procured directly from the producers/farms, not from a re-seller.
(although, fuck their labour practices, I very much wish they had competition in the city so they would be pressured to clean up their act in that regard, I hate that I feel like I have to compromise my values in some way in order to buy local and direct)
Lufa is good quality and fresh (usually), but it certainly isn’t cheap!
That doesn’t scale, and it’s sometimes even illegal. We /used/ to deal with market failure and make sure basic services were met by creating crown corporations. Imagine that the Westons had to compete with a public company that got basic food goods from the farms to stores at industrial scale and at break-even costs. Heck, it could even lose money in remote areas where people can’t currently access healthy food as the healthcare savings would be a great investment. It wouldn’t have to be fancy, and it wouldn’t have to include anything highly processed -just basic, healthy grocery goods that meet our needs. The capitalists would do fine, but would have to either actually be more efficient than the publicly owned system, or rely on premium goods for their profits (which they already mostly do anyway).
There needs to be services that directly connect farmers with consumers.
There are many.
given that many people use another middleman (Instacart, etc.) to actually get their groceries.
I have done some consulting for a business that is trying to be much like Instacart for farm-to-consumer transactions. They have a strong niche customer base of those with a certain conviction, but I don’t see it ever being something the masses will use. I think you might be underplaying the service a grocery store does provide.
I have no idea how to reach out to farmers
Well, I’m one. You have my ear.
I’m probably not the kind of farmer you need, though. I want to dump all of my product, which could be enough to feed hundreds of thousands of people or more (and my farm is small!), off at harvest and move on. You need mass distribution to be able to absorb that.
The farmers you find at farmers markets would be a better fit, I imagine. If you are serious about this, go there and talk to them. They’re usually friendly and interested in this type of thing. If you can help them better connect with the customer, they will be listening.
