Why you should care?
Why should you care about food inflation in India? Because you are next! According to a report by Nikhil Inamdar (BBC News, Mumbai). "With a big general election looming this summer, the Indian government has swung into action, unleashing a number of measures they hope will tame (or at least slow) food inflation."
The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) Rice Price Index jumped by 2.8% in July - its highest level since September 2011 - driven mostly by price increases in the Indica variety of rice whose exports India banned. This has amplified the "upward pressure" on the prices of rice from other regions, the FAO said. "Since the ban was announced late last month, Thai rice prices have increased 20%," Joseph W Glauber, senior research fellow at IFPRI, told the BBC.
This will of course be reflected in prices at your local supermarket. But if you think rice is the only thing you will be seeing a rise in pricing for, you are sorely mistaken!
In 2024, prices are set to increase, again! The ERS predicts a 5 percent increase in food prices overall. Food away from home, or food purchased at restaurants or for takeout, are set to increase by 8.5 percent. Department of Agriculture (USDA) predicted in 2023 that prices would increase by 5.8 percent. In January, at-home food prices were 11.3 percent higher than they were at the same time in 2022. So prepare, herb gardening victory gardening planting fruit trees, the average consumer needs to think about the future decades and not just annually! Climate change is not going to suddenly get better its going to gradually get worse because nations overall who are the largest polluters have no intention of slowing down their national profits time to get woke and stop inhaling the corporate propaganda smoke!
In fact, we’ve already seen prices increase in the last few months of 2023. Wholesale pork belly prices jumped 100% plus year-to-date at the end of the summer, and beef prices hit record highs in November. Other standouts include animal fats and oils, processed fruits and vegetables, sugar and sweets, sodas and nonalcoholic beverages, which are all expected to increase by between five and seven percent. And although the USDA ERS (Environmental Research Service) predicts that dairy product prices will drop by 0.6 percent in 2024,This may change due to climate change, and adverse weather factors that farmers have faced over the course of this year.
The mission of USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) is to anticipate trends and emerging issues in agriculture, food, the environment, and rural America; and to conduct high-quality, objective, economic research to inform and enhance public and private decision making. In short what happens to the small farmer affects our pocket because corporate America doesn't care if you starve, but the small farmer is you!
As for India, India's retail inflation eased to a three-month low of 5.09% in January on slowing food price rises and favorable base effects, according to economists polled by Reuters who also predicted a moderation in core inflation to 3.70%. "We expect inflation in India eased in January on still elevated but falling food price growth," said Alexandra Hermann, lead economist at Oxford Economics. "Base effects, softening food price growth, and lower oil prices due to weak market fundamentals should provide further relief to headline inflation in the coming months." But supermarkets are seeing a drastic change in what American consumers are buying at the checkout.
Millennials and Gen Z'ers are smarter than their Gen X and Baby Boomer predecessors. Those nutrition-related buzzwords that effectively mislead Americans for years to believe they're buying healthy food, even when the product in question don't work on them they expect lies and google everything! Packaging tricks like wrapping foods in green so you believe they are healthy don't work because young people today don't want their food in packages and they don't want foods banned in every other country because it causes cancer even if the USDA or the FDA says its okay... Let them eat it!
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