Food Costs Jump Most in 18 Years

[Breeze54]

Food Costs Jump Most in 18 Years

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/14/AR2008051403670.html

Prices of Other Goods Rose Less Than Forecast in April

By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 15, 2008; Page D01

Rising global grain prices helped spark the largest increase in monthly food costs in nearly 20 years, as consumers paid more in April for cereals and baked goods, and the dairy, meat and other animal products that rely on feedstocks, the government reported yesterday.

Food prices have risen at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.1 percent past three months. The 0.9 percent rise from March to April was the biggest one-month advance since January 1990, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The rise in prices covered all categories of food but was most severe among such staples as grains and oils -- goods where inflation has touched off food riots in some less developed countries and led to concerns about shortages.

The costs of cereal and bakery products increased 1.4 percent from March to April and have risen at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of nearly 20 percent in the past three months. Prices for fats and oils jumped more than 5 percent in April, on a seasonally adjusted annual basis, and have increased more than 26 percent in the past three months. Prices for sugars and sweets increased more than 10 percent during that same period.

The jump in food prices, along with a steady rise in the cost of gasoline, clouded an inflation report that otherwise contained good news for policymakers.

More....

[Nikki Stone1]

1. kick and thanks

:kick:

[Breeze54]

2. I don't know about you but it's killing me...

:(

You're Welcome.

[Nikki Stone1]

5. Me, too

It's good to see in black and white what I know is the truth. The milk, egg and bread prices are through the roof.

[Breeze54]

8. I found 1% milk on sale at Lil' Peach for $2.79 a Gal. the other

day and I've been buying a half doz eggs at a time, as it's cheaper and I don't use them that much.
Bread I buy on sale, 2 loaves for $4.00, when it is on sale. There's a Pepperidge Farms outlet near
me (8 miles away) but I won't go there unless I'm in that neighborhood. Gas!!

[Nikki Stone1]

9. It's like they've got us coming and going

It's just frustrating as hell.

I've haven't seen milk as low as $2.79 in my part of LA. And the organic stuff is up to $7. Scary as hell.

[lovuian]

3. and they say for the month of April that inflation is 2%

these people in the government need to be arrested and jailed for the LIES

the FDA is one also

[Breeze54]

4. I know....

it seems to me all the numbers are being fudged! :grr:

[Mrs. Overall]

6. 18 years ago? My, my, would that have been under another Bush presidency?

[Breeze54]

7. I think you are correct! Why am I not surprised.

:grr:

[Warpy]

10. This article is a lie. This isn't what we had 18 years ago and that

they lied about, this is what we had in the 1970s when there were still a few news departments with the guts to tell us the truth. Of course, back then they blamed unions and high wages for inflation instead of OPEC and the skyrocketing cost of oil, but the cause and the effect were identical.

Today it's not OPEC, it's the hedge funds gaming commodities, aided by a lunatic administration threatening chaos in another oil producing country. Still, it's cartels of unimaginably rich men getting together and artificially pumping up the cost of necessary things in order to make even more obscene wealth off human suffering.

We're having to make a few hard choices--bag lunches instead of fast food, for instance--but the world's poor are watching their kids starve because of these rich men, feeding them dirt pies in Haiti and who knows what in other parts of the third world.

When are we going to end the idolatry of the opulent, to realize they are the absolute worst among us, and make sure their kind of machination is regulated out of existence once again?

[Breeze54]

11. "during 1988, food prices were up 5.2 percent"

Price highlights of 1988: rising pressures on consumer prices

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1153/is_n5_v112/ai_7696015

Snip-->

Excluding energy, however, the CPI-U advanced 4.7 percent during 1988, compared with a 4.1-percent increase in 1987. Rising food prices were partially responsible for this acceleration--food prices were up 5.2 percent in 1988, the most since 1980,

[Warpy]

12. Compare that with an annual inflation rate of over 20%

that last month's food prices reflect and you'll see what I mean.

This hasn't been seen since the 70s, although the last BFEE administration did see large increases in food prices.

[Breeze54]

15. At any rate, it's killing us!

Milk, bread, eggs, ice cream, poultry, meat, etc. ... all across the board, everything we eat is going higher in price. :(

[Warpy]

17. That's why so many of us turned into foodies in the 70s

Dining out was just not in the cards. Doing round robin dinners at friends' houses was dining out for us. Eventually, I got hired to come in and cook some of those dinners in their houses.

I didn't eat meat at all for 10 years. When I started to eat it because it was quick and fast to prepare and I was in nursing school and needed something that fast, I found I'd lost my taste for the stuff.

That's how we coped the last time a cartel of rich men did this to us.

[Marrah_G]

13. I am so screwed :(

[Breeze54]

14. I hear that!

:hug:

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. Gee you think?

it's gotten ugly out there