Experts say high food prices are here to stay. Here's why

Comments

• nick@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Here’s why: “because they can get away with it”

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  • Iheartcheese@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Because they haven’t been deposed. Yet.

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• dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Not a single word of this article explains why. It only says that food prices will remain high, and probably go up more when the tariffs are enacted, and we should just suck it up and deal with it because there’s “nothing anyone can do.”

  Which is obviously bullshit.

  The reason food prices remain high is simple corporate profitmongering, and the (US) government absolutely could do something about it but they won’t. Food is a product – the product – with a notoriously inelastic demand, so retailers and middlemen in every step of the supply chain can and do pad their profits by as much as the market will bear plus a little more on top. Because they know they can get away with it and the vast majority of people will have no choice but to pay whatever it is, or starve.

  The margin on prepared packaged food items is typically in the order of 15-35% per link in the supply chain (supplier -> manufacturer -> distributor -> retailer). Everybody wants too big of a slice of the pie. The government absolutely could step in and pass a law stipulating thou shalt not charge more than 10% (or whatever) over your invoice, under pain of us confiscating every penny above that mark via taxes and using them to pay for soup kitchens. But That Would Be Socialism^tm^, so it’ll never happen here.

  (And yes, the margins on unprocessed foods like produce and meat are slightly lower.)

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  • biptoot@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Yes please, I’ll take the soup kitchens and socialism

    I looked into what happens in the meat industry, and found out it’s actually pretty highly processed. It is incredibly disturbing the supply chain workflow that meat moves through

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  • paraphrand@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    They basically walk through all that in the video version. Including playing clips of companies saying their raised prices are sticky, and they expect more profit as a result when inflation cools.

    They should that percentage stuff in an animated graphical explanation of passing costs through to the customer.

    youtu.be/22StbCBvWLg

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• Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Food prices are currently high because St. Luigi is currently focused on healthcare.

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  • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I don’t mean to be depressing, but I think you’ll find St. Luigi is currently focused on saving his neck.

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    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      St. Luigi is more of an idea than a person.

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• Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Because they realized money is fake and they can charge whatever they want with no consequences?

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  • HeyJoe@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    There will be consequences. Who knows how long it will take. Seems like we’re getting close to that breaking point. There always used to be that fine line were they took just enough so people can survive. Now they are all just extra greedy and took too it all. Tons of people have now used their savings, safety nets, and maxed out credit cards to survive. There’s already more people than ever going homeless and defaulting on loans and credit cards. It won’t be long before an even higher percentage of people have no more options and get desperate. These price increases are just one of the direct causes for failing to survive. I say there’s only a few more years until something big happens.

    Just my opinion. I am one of the people effected by price increases and I feel like I make a decent living. I can’t imagine how people who make even less do it…

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• TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Because we’ve passed peak agricultural land. The land committed to growing crops and pasture used for grazing livestock has peaked. The global population, however, continues to increase. There are methods for maximizing yields from farm land, and we haven’t exhausted those, but there’s only so much food that can be produced on a hectare of land. We also have to deal with top soil depletion, the risks of monoculture, the effects climate change could have on crop yields, and many other problems.

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• Etterra@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Step 1: Greed Step 2: Deport all the immigrant laborers Step 3: Tariffs on foreign goods. Step 4: Raise prices when their own profits drop. Step 5: Hungry citizens build guillotines.

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• captainlezbian@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Let me guess, it’s because once in a lifetime weather events are annual these days

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