May 23, 2014 — It's not just your imagination: You are spending more money at the grocery store these days as the price of limes, shrimp, hamburgers and bacon skyrockets.
Prices are rising, and not just with those foods that have been affected by Mexican drug cartels or been hamstrung by epidemics of pig diarrhea.
Even when adjusted for inflation, the price of flour has gone up 50% in the last decade, bacon is up 41% and beef is up 30%. Just about the only things that have stayed the same, when adjusted for inflation: malt beverages, which went down in price, and chips, which grew about 3% in price.
"We had a period of stable, predictable retail food prices from 1990-2006, when food prices did pretty much the same thing every year," said Richard Volpe, a research economist with the Food Markets Branch of the Food Economics Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "But since 2006, retail food prices have risen faster than overall economy-wise prices."
So what's going on?
First of all, it’s perishables that are jumping in price – meats, dairy, fruit. Foods such as soda, candy and crackers are staying relatively flat.
That's because around the world, as developing countries get richer, their residents are clamoring for more meat, fruit and dairy. Basic laws of economics tell us that when demand goes up, prices do too, unless supply goes up as well. And supply of these items has, in fact, been going down, Volpe said.
Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times