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.

[smcgrath76]

I agree that there are some Canadians
who struggle to find money for food, but
I believe even more so that there are a
lot of choices. Many people will also
complain about the $ they spent on
groceries when there is also laundry
soap, toilet paper, etc. in their cart.
In truth, it is often much cheaper to
buy "ingedients" or "food" than
processed items, but tradeoffs are made
for time, effort, cooking skill, etc.
We haven't done a very good job in
developing a "food culture".
I don't think we should begrudge someone
who makes $15/pound on their beef cow, I
think we should look and learn.
This is for sure the first time in
millenia where food is not a priority
for a lot of folks.

[kato]

This is a topic near and dear to me. There is a whole generation who simply do not know how to cook. They can order, they can reheat, they can microwave. But they can not cook. Face it, there's a big difference between a fried chicken dinner with four days worth of salt and fat in it and a nice lean homemade burger with Mom's homemade dill pickles and relish on it. Living on fast food is living on the fast track to bad health.

I found that when I worked out full time, I would come home too tired to cook a meal, and too much of the extra cash from the off farm job often went towards that chicken dinner from town, or the convenient stuff from the grocery store. It was too easy. And it sucked back a lot of my earnings.

When I quit work, our cost of living dropped at least $5000.00 a year, right off the start, and that's just for two people. Imagine adding a couple of teenage hollow legged, walking appetite, constantly hungry sons to the mix?

Since then we've added home raised chicken and eggs to the beef we already had, and expanded the garden to the point that now I'm selling veggies too. Restaurants are back to being a treat, or somewhere we visit when we're out of town. Now with the extra savings and my little farmer market sideline, I think we're farther ahead than when I worked out. The farm runs better with both of us at home, and the quality of life has gone way way up.

I realize that not everyone has the opportunity to raise their own meat and eggs, but it doesn't take too many square feet, or even big pots of dirt, to grow some vegetables. It costs a fraction of the restaurant price to make your own versions of the very same food. You can make a $30.00 pizza for less than $10 at home,and it will be bigger, have more on it, and taste better.

By the time some families factor in the cost of pre-packaged convenience food, restaurants, day care, an extra car and the extra costs associated with going to a job every day, they could likely have a good life on one decent income. And their children would be much healthier eating home made cookies than a bag of chips and a coke for snacks.

More people need to sit down and do the math. They may be pleasantly surprised.

[smcgrath76]

Kato - from a household with 3 young
children we have come to believe that
the system is designed to create
employment and/or do nothing with no
middle ground.
For the record, we ranch and I operate a
couple of other businesses from home,
and my wife is an RN. We don't use
external child care.
As it appears to us, you are further
ahead financially to stay home and
collect family allowance, or to put your
kids in daycare and claim the tax
deduction than you are to juggle
life/work and raise your own kids.
Tanya is not going to quit work as she
likes the security of knowing if I get
hit by a bus, she can still provide an
income.

[greybeard]

I've considered that Per. I'm a big believer in Karma ie: What goes around comes around. I've just never felt comfortable jumping in in an already uncomfortable situation.
Might be easy once you've done it once.

[per]

I think we all would be surprised at how many could learn something at a teaching moment. I am positive we would be the biggest winner out of trying that greybeard. Heck it is already uncomfortable.