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A new study concludes energy has a greater impact on rising food prices than rising corn prices does.Energy costs have a much greater impact on consumer food costs as they impact every single food product on the shelf,” said Urbanchuk. “Energy is required to produce, process, package and ship each food item. Conversely, corn prices impact just a small segment of the food market as not all products rely on corn for production. While it may be more sensational to lay the blame for rising food costs on corn prices, the facts don’t support that conclusion. By a factor of two-to-one, energy prices are the chief factor determining what American families pay at the grocery store.
Purchasing food grown locally on farms that grow a diverse range of crops is the wave of the future. As gas prices rise, we will no longer be able to depend on food grown on gigantic factory farms in a few parts of the nation. Shipping lettuce to Iowa from California will no longer be affordable. The age of the 3000-mile-caesar salad is coming to an end.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
The age of the 3000-mile-caesar salad is coming to an end
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2 comments:
Let's say a total of 2000 miles is traveled to bring heads of lettuce from CA to Iowa - not only the primary delivery, but distribution as well. Let's also say that the trucks get 6 miles/gal of diesel. Finally, let's assume a load of lettuce weighs 40,000 lbs, and each head weighs 2 lbs.
So, at $3/gal diesel, the fuel costs of transporting work out to be $1000 for the trip, or $0.05 per head of lettuce. If fuel were to double, that's $0.10/head of lettuce. That's really not that great of increase, NoNeed.
Of course, if diesel did double, as would gasoline, the planting, spraying, harvesting and processing costs would increase, so maybe you'd have $0.12/head increase if diesel went to $6/gal. Still not a big deal, relatively.
I was talking to the wife of a local truck driver last night who hauls produce for Hy-Vee through a contractor. They signed up for a year's contract with the contractor. At the beginning of the contract they were making a weekly run, taking home about $1600/week. However, because fuel costs have increased, and the contractor had made a flat rate agreement with Hy-Vee, the couple is now only taking home around $800/week. The contractor is taking the cost of fuel out on the drivers, not Hy-Vee. Therefore, produce prices at Hy-Vee should not increase due to fuel costs, according to her story.
The cost of energy is everywhere in the delivery process and must be counted. The cost of building and maintaining large trucks and the roads they travel on is huge. The cost of the pollution from the fuel that gets burned is rarely considered. This includes remediation as well as health care costs that are sky rocketing out of control. The cost of all the refrigeration along the way, processing and even refrigeration in the store is part of the mix too.
For too long we've evaluated our economy on face issues alone and that is why we're in the crisis we're in. All our chickens have come home to rest and we can't kick them down the road anymore. It's time to calculate the true cost of doing business and run a real economy that takes into account every cost. there is no "AWAY" in "THROW AWAY". Everything is still here!
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