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Food Prices

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ponyo said:
I grocery shop regularly so I know the prices. Prices on meat and dairy have increased significantly the past year. We've also switched to buying organic brands on many items so I'm paying even more now. But I've learned to bend over and take it just as I did when gas prices shot up couple years back. The weekly savings at the gas pump is now going to food companies.
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The whole "organic" thing is just a bunch of hype to sell to people who don't know any better, here, watch this short vid and learn the TRUTH about the "organic' foods you are eating, turns out the "organic" growers are using out-dated pesticides that are many times more toxic than the newer synthetic ones.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhBKtjDtTVk Don't get me wrong, I'm totally against GMO's but guess what, "organics" contain those as well...http://gmo-awareness.com/2011/05/05/is-organic-always-gmo-free/
 
Skaendo said:
I beg to differ. In South Dakota around where I lived last year and for the previous 10 years, all the cattle ranches were increasing their heads by 3000+ on each ranch. And this is the good black angus.
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Its great that in your area of SD they have large cattle herd sizes but the price depends on more than the SD herd sizes particuarly since TX typically produces the most cattle. Your disagreement also goes against commonly reported news. These are just a few sites noting herd sizes as a major part of the problem:

http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/beef-prices-hit-u-s-record-and-are-still-rising/article_27237442-07c0-589d-b42e-0ac3faf24aa7.html
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tomorrows-hamburger-may-cost-as-much-as-todays-steak-2014-02-20
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/25/usa-agriculture-inflation-idUSL1N0QV0NL20140825
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/06/13/190712366/why-you-ll-be-paying-more-for-beef-all-this-year
 
Skaendo said:
Yea a lot of the corn in South Dakota is grown for ethanol. IMO ethanol is the biggest waste of time, money and resources.

It costs more to make it than it's worth, and if you run it in a car or truck you lose performance not to mention residue build-up because you are actually burning OIL.
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You're doing it wrong. 🙂

I make ~30% more power on E85 than on 91. :awe:
 
dmcowen674 said:
Everyone on AT makes six figures or better so they don't notice.
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I am at that level and I sure as hell notice supporting 4 people now (was 5 during the last school year).

Ground Sirloin is going for what T-bones were not to long ago.

I try to keep everyone eating healthy, salads and veggies are up, fruit juices are up, all meats are up, eggs up, dairy all up.

It used to be my grocery bills weren't that bad unless I was buying household chemicals/detergents/paper products. Now even with just a small load of groceries, I am over $100. The plus side is my grocery usually has $50 gas cards for $40 if you spend at least $50, so I pick up two (or more) to offset the costs.
 
bbhaag said:
Ya prices have been slowly going up over the past year or two. We used to get away with a $125 grocery bill every couple of weeks in the past but now it creeps up to around $150 to $160. If we have to buy items like garbage bags or laundry detergent it can go a little higher. It makes it tough for a family of four making right around $65k a year like we do.
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My grocery bill is over $100 a week. And that's without buying much protein either. And that only gets me about two and a half bags of product. WTF is going on in the world?
 
Skaendo said:
Actually other countries don't want our food anymore because of the GMOs that our government approves and forces on our farmers & ranchers.
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GMOs aren't "forced" on growers, it's just hard to compete with their higher yield and disease resistance. You have to be able to command a premium in order to make up the difference, which means that you have to jump on the organic bandwagon. But that's still a pretty small piece of the overall food market.
 
Food has gone up a lot yes.
You have farmers allocating lots of land for fuel rather than food production, and supply of food is reduced, increasing prices.

You have various droughts reducing crop yields in various parts of the world, supply reduces, prices increase.

You have that pig plague that has been going around killing off lots of piglets, which essentially caused the price of pork to double (thats supposedly gone now)

cows eat a ton of feed as they usually do not get enough land to graze for 100% of their dietary needs. Feed prices have gone up due to above reasons. Ground beef and steak have increased in price by 100%.

Also, rice used to be so cheap it was almost free, now, its usually around $1 per pound. Potatoes same story.

All the cheap staples are real money.
 
Skaendo said:
I beg to differ. In South Dakota around where I lived last year and for the previous 10 years, all the cattle ranches were increasing their heads by 3000+ on each ranch. And this is the good black angus.
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You can beg all you want. While you're at it beg for a brain, or at the least the common sense to educate yourself on a subject before making yourself look foolish.

The mighty South Dakota accounts for about 4% of cattle production and they could double their production and that would barely be a blip on national production stats. Nearly half of US beef production is from 6 states, all of which are in the worst part of the drought areas.

And mighty South Dakota's beef production has been going down despite your highly scientific method of apparently counting cows while you're out tipping them.

http://www.cattlerange.com/cattle-graphs/all-cattle-numbers.html

Yes, lots of places are trying to grow their herds. But that's a reaction to current prices and it takes several years for that plan to reach fruition as cows don't grow to slaughtering size overnight. Even if South Dakota does manage to grow their cattle production that won't do jack shit to beef prices overall and even if a bunch of other states grow their production to compensate it's still a long way from being able to drive prices lower. High beef and dairy prices are here for at least a couple more years until the ranchers catch up again.
 
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BUTCH1 said:
The whole "organic" thing is just a bunch of hype to sell to people who don't know any better, here, watch this short vid and learn the TRUTH about the "organic' foods you are eating, turns out the "organic" growers are using out-dated pesticides that are many times more toxic than the newer synthetic ones.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhBKtjDtTVk Don't get me wrong, I'm totally against GMO's but guess what, "organics" contain those as well...http://gmo-awareness.com/2011/05/05/is-organic-always-gmo-free/
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Buying "organic" labeled food makes my wife feel better. Is it a ripoff? Probably. But she's happy buying organic stuff so I'm happy. But we don't shop at Whole Foods. We shop at Costco, Trader Joe's, and Publix.
 
ponyo said:
Buying "organic" labeled food makes my wife feel better. Is it a ripoff? Probably. But she's happy buying organic stuff so I'm happy. But we don't shop at Whole Foods. We shop at Costco, Trader Joe's, and Publix.
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Like anything you have to understand your sources.

I agree with the OP, many organic foods are possibly inferior to their non-organic counterparts.

Heck, my father-in-law picked up a small chicken operation (compared to commercial). Totally free reign and fed properly in an area with mostly 1%er's. He has been selling eggs at $5 a dozen or something crazy. He has like 100+ dozen per day!

He bought the birds for about $200. He had the property to put them up. I am not sure what the total costs to build it out was, but he is flush with cash.

He says it's not as easy as it sounds though.
 
ponyo said:
Buying "organic" labeled food makes my wife feel better. Is it a ripoff? Probably. But she's happy buying organic stuff so I'm happy. But we don't shop at Whole Foods. We shop at Costco, Trader Joe's, and Publix.
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Please tell me you aren't shopping at 'a farmer's market' for the organic produce, that's a huge scam most of the time unless you know the growers
 
I was just in New Jersey this weekend, and thought to myself at the time, that there are some pretty significant regional differences in food costs. I loved that I could get gas for $2.85 a gallon, instead of $3.63 (today's price, here.) But, food? Holy shit was it expensive down there. Apples here: 77 cents a pound, including honey crisps. NJ: over $2 per pound. Chicken here (bought 2 chickens to roast last night - one for me and my wife, one for the cats) 98 cents per pound. NJ: a lot more. Ribeyes (what I had in NJ) - around $60 for 4 steaks (I believe they were about 16 oz each.) Here: on sale every other week for $7.99/lb. Heck, when I was in NJ, I needed some seasonings for some potatoes I was cooking. Grocery store brand at almost every chain in this area: $1 for most common spices. There: $2.99 for the grocery store brand, $6-$8 for the national brand (wtfbbq?) (Paprika & chili powder)
 
I paid closer attention to prices tonight. I think, with the only exceptions being some beef cuts (especially hamburger), most prices seem a little bit lower for stuff I buy. Milk prices vary wildly, from $2 per gallon to $3.99 per gallon.

Though, with whole chickens at 98 cents per pound, split chicken breast at 98 cents per pound, and boneless skinless chicken breast at $1.77 per pound, why worry about hamburg?

Apples were on sale today, 57 cents per pound, except honey crisps- still 77 cents.
 
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Food prices are very dependent on how many different players there are in your area. In madison there are quite a few different stores so pricing is competitive. Up north there are not so many and pricing is crazy expensive. I used to budget $25 per person per week to feed my family, now we are more like $40.
 
funny thing is if your salary doesn't go up the same as other expenses, then that raise that you may have gotten or that cost of living bump is worthless. and with no increase in salary, you are actually being demoted, in life.
 
Certain things ive noticed huge differences, bacon is like 6 bucks a pack for anything on the average. Cheap crap (inedible) is at least 5
 
alkemyst said:
Interesting, last week lobster (not maine) was on sale here for close to ground sirloin too. We have Publix.
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Ground chicken used to be a "higher end" meat (something you paid a bit more for to eat healthier), and ground beef was the cheap stuff. Now ground chicken is $2.99/lb, and ground chuck (80/20 stuff) is pricing out at $4.99/lb. What the hell??? My wife got me some steaks for my birthday and they were top sirloins...kind of the low end of the better steaks...and they were $9.99/lb!!! Ribeye is over $14/lb here. I think the California drought is causing the price spike, but beef is no longer affordable.

I'm waiting for fast food places to start raising their prices.
 
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