Food Prices on the Move

We’re used to world events having an impact (almost immediately, but that’s another story) on fuel and home heating  prices.   Now  the financial impact of floods, droughts, growing wealth in Asia,  and political instability will be felt at the supermarket too.

Canada’s largest food retailer Loblaws,  is  warning consumers that they’ll be paying more, but not stating it directly.

It’s parent company is George Weston Ltd a big producer of baked goods.  Weston said yesterday that it will raise  prices by 5% on April 1, because of the rising cost of wheat, sugar, and oil. That’s a different headline than “Superstore Warns Customers They’ll be Paying More”, but it will amount to the same thing.  The food retail business is intensely competitive, and the handful of companies will watch each other carefully (Loblaws-Superstore  and Sobeys don’t want to cede any ground or customers to Walmart).

Maritime farmers aren’t big players in the milling wheat, oilseed, or sugar industries, so there won’t be any big payday for the regions farmers, but  commodity prices are moving up, and depending on how much fertilizer, farm chemical, and fuel prices go up this Spring,  farm incomes should improve.

There’s more on the international factors at play in rising food prices here:

http://www.farmmarketer.com/home/news/?storyid=3045

Ian Petrie

http://foodmatters-petrie.blogspot.com/

Now Maple Leaf Needs Pigs

There were never any warm and fuzzy feelings between the region’s hog farmers and Maple Leaf Foods. Michael McCain, the Maple Leaf chair, remains a tough negotiator,  well aware of what Maple Leaf needed in a very competitive business, and often very dismissive of the financial hardship facing hog producers.

As most know, the regions hog industry has virtually collapsed, just a handful of large producers left. Today this story about Maple Leaf’s operation in Berwick Nova Scotia.   It comes just as hog prices have started to recover.  Is that a phoenix rising from the ashes, or just more snow blowing around?

http://www.novanewsnow.com/Business/Agriculture/2010-02-13/article-808979/Not-enough-hogs—Larsen%26rsquo%3Bs/1