The low/high cost of food

[ASRG]

The consensus seems to be food in Canada is cheap? Is it?
If you are making a good wage I guess it is, but what about the single mother, the working poor, the disabled, the senior citizen without a pension? The expanding lower middle class?
For those people "expensive food", like beef, is becoming a burden. They have no other choice than to try to put something in their belly at the cheapest possible price.
Beef prices have not kept up with inflation. Definitely have not kept up with housing, gasoline, utilities? Even with good wages, there is a lot of stress on young families to meet their monthly living expenses....and food is one area where they can actually cut the bill by substituting for cheaper products?...more beans, less beef!
There is a lot of talk on here about valuable niche markets and that is a good thing to strive for, but the reality is the commodity type beef market is unlikely to ever return to the numbers of the past? And that means we need fewer cattle and fewer producers?

[rkaiser]

We need nothing of the sort... The world is hungry for consciously raised high quality beef and we are in the postion to offer it.

The consumer you speak of has a choice, and as much as you want to believe they can not afford it - they can still buy hamburger for a very reasonably prices meal. Even if we keep our naturally raised consciously grown burger at a premium price over imported product that comes from "who knows where".

Our little town is full of mobile homes and people who seem to be "poor" yet the bar is always full and the cigarettes sell like hotcakes in the local convenience stores.

I refuse to believe that we need to drop cattle numbers in a country and especially a province that has the capacity to raise beef cattle on marginal land and if marketed properly, on land suited for commodity grains destined for the ethanol factory was well. LOL

[perfecho]

How long do you have to stand in line to buy a $3.00 cup of coffee?
We have cheapened food, in the 60's, 25% of a families income was for food, and most grew a garden...today about 10%....and the kicker....wait for it.....30% of that is thrown out because we don't like leftovers!

[rkaiser]

And what was the switch in health care costs during that time perfecho. I think it is something like 10% in the sixties vs 25% now. The government might as well simply give the poor people something healthy to eat and cut the health care bill down....

[kato]

I remember when I was a kid that a Coke was a treat. We had a "family size" Coke, which was only 750ml, on Saturday night, split extremely evenly between the four of us kids, and made popcorn on the stove to go with it. It was a big deal, especially the pouring of the Coke. LOL

Now Coke is cheaper than milk, and more than a few kids drink it with their meals instead of milk. And the nutrition often goes downhill from there.

Are we really better off now? Sometimes I wonder.

[perfecho]

And Randy, as some of us become old buggers, it's going to be even more.....although in the 60's I don't think they were paying for hip replacements, heart replacments, etc. etc.
When they come up with brain replacments, some of us farmers may have a chance ;-0

[PureCountry]

In my opinion everything is perspective.
We've had people tell us our prices are
too low. They're the clients who buy the
tenderloin whenever they feel like it.
Then we have people tell us our prices
are too high. Those are the clients who
have 2-6 small children, low-income
jobs, a mortgage, and still manage to
pay for an I-phone, smokes and
Starbucks. It's all perspective.

Much like the lady who came to the
conference room in our store to give a
workshop on manifesting what you want in
your life. After listening to her
theories I asked her how she makes her
living and she has sold enough copies of
a couple books that she doesn't have to
"work" if she doesn't want to. She can
have the abundance and financial freedom
that she talks about in her workshops
because enough lemmings have spent their
2 hours of minimum wage labour to buy a
copy of her philosophical text hoping to
find "the Secret".

That is perspective. It's easy to praise
manure when it's fertilizing your
garden, but even easier to call it $hit
when you step in it. It's easy to buy
the cheaper groceries when they fit
within the confines of a $200 budget. It
suddenly becomes easier to buy the
nutrient dense food, the book on
nutrition, or the juicing machine when
the doc gives you the long face and says
he wants to start chemo next week.

THAT, is perspective.

[rook]

IMO we have cheap food which is also the value society puts on farmers. When food is expensive all of a sudden society will value farmers. While that sounds like a good thing it may also lead to export restrictions and other interventionist programs to lower the price of food.

[greybeard]

We often shop in the city where a lot of low income folks also by groceries ( I won't say food).
It's not at all unusual to be in line with someone who doesn't have enough cash to pay for the whole cart. I've seen them out by >$50 often. They sort through and always pick out the nutrient dense FOOD and go out with a bunch of high carb crap like dry noodles,puffed wheat and potato chips. For sure you can't have too much pop because it's on sale. Most are flabby and out of shape.
I don't like being judgmental and truly sympathize with their situation but somehow we have to teach people how make better choices.

[per]

How about next time stand there and offer to pay the difference if they leave the nutrient rich food in the lot.