The Rising Cost of Food

goodgodthatonesevenbigger

I wonder how long it will be until everyone is growing their own? What worries me is i live in quite an urban enviroment with very little garden space, theres very few available allotments, a lot of people where i live are quite unsavory to say the least. How long will it be before i wake up one morning to find all my home grown veg missing?

Growing your own and just using shops to top up with things you cant grow at home was something i grew up with, parents and grandparents had allotments, and grew in the garden, picked wild fruit and produced as much of their needs as possible. It would be lovely to get back to that way of life as the food was so much nicer and fresher.

Merry_Wanderer

We have a small local farm shop that keeps getting busier and busier. Last winter with all the snow, I couldn't get any shopping delivered. I don't have a car (not that it would have been much use), and I remember the trek to the farm was so worth making, I was so thankful for it as the local shop had had no deliveries either. I hope we see more of this type of thing popping up to save us.

ceridwen

goodgodthatonesevenbigger wrote: »

This just makes me more determined to convert the whole garden into a veg plot next year, maybe some chucks as well.

Its not going to be long before a large percentage of normal people cant afford their daily staples anymore. It makes you wonder how people can continue to lead the so called 'aspirational life styles' and what they are actually missing out on or not paying to do so.

I must say I think its very difficult to figure out just what is going on - ie re peoples standard of living. Between the fact that one can see a lot of people are able to eat too much food/drive cars round regularly/smoke on the one hand and the knowledge that a lot of people still live "on credit" on the other hand - it is extremely difficult to gauge what is happening.

Re "aspirational" lifestyles as well - there is a huge question there as to what is "aspirational" and what is "reasonable/normal/to be expected and something has gone wrong if one is trying best possible...but that lifestyle isnt materialising".

We could have a HUGE debate about what is "aspirational" and what is "normal" - and, in the end, it would in most peoples cases probably boil down to "What did my own parents eventually achieve - and have I got to that level myself?"

Make the answer "No" in my case - and I'm a Baby Boomer generation person - not the younger generation.

That topic could keep Discussion Time Board going until Christmas in other words...

*************************

However - onto what would I personally say is the level beneath which one doesnt have enough income to live on?

If you cant have:
- a reasonable home (your own - rather than rented if that is what you want)

- a healthy diet

- whatever health care is required (even if it has to be paid for:()

- at least an emergency level of savings

- no debts

- never refusing to switch heating on when required because of the cost of it

So - assuming that the person themselves is genuinely "trying" and not taking on an "unreasonable" level of life expense (and that would be a whole other subject for debate - as some peeps would promptly label their own personal choices as "reasonable") - then this is what I would expect them to have and less than that equals the income isnt high enough and the EMPLOYER isnt paying them enough (I've counted out the Government as a source of supply of income to be fair and equal all round).

parsonswife8

Our back garden is not that big...but we manage to grow beef tomatoes and moneymaker tomatoes, in tubs in 2 portable green houses and cherry tomatoes in a hanging basket. We also have 2 tubs of charnternay carrots, one of spring onions, one of beetroot and one of radishes, a few small pots of chillies and a pepper plant and about 6 different herbs in pots on the kitchen windowsill

I have a long plastic pot with perpetual salad and a pot of rocket.

It's the staple foodstuffs though, flour, sugar, wheat, dairy products, meat and fish, that are leaping up in price and as was pointed out, this has a knock on effect on a lot of other foods.

We do not eat junk food but you do see trollies piled high with it.

We don't waste much food and most of the peelings etc are composted.

In the winter, I buy cheaper cuts of meat, like pork hocks and lamb's liver and kidneys and stewing beef, to make curries and stews and soup with split peas and lentils.

God only knows how some people will cope!

goodgodthatonesevenbigger

At the moment i only grow toms and courgettes, i tried sweetcorn this year but it failed , but next year i intend to go the whole hog as it were and grow spuds, onions, parsnips, carrots, swede, brocoli, cauli, beans, toms, courgettes, and maybe some squashes.

i will also be starting with the preserving, and foraging.

This year i cut my meat budget by about 50% by eating 3 vegi meals a week, and by cutting the amount of meat used in dishes by about 50% and making the difference up by adding more veg or lentals.

As daft as it sounds i cant afford to go fully self sufficient food wise but i would love to. At least i can make a dent in my shopping bills and an improvement in the actual food i eat.

valk_scot

parsonswife8 wrote: »

God only knows how some people will cope!

Yes, exactly. There will be a lot of people who can't actually cook, or have been used to living on very upmarket ingredients (I'm thinking of people who will only eat chicken breasts and steak for example) or have been used to eating meat at most meals that will be hit hardest. And as I've found there's a real lack of knowledge out there as to what you need to eat in terms of actually eating healthily. Most folk know about calories and saturated fats and salt and five a day, for example, but very few know the recommended portion sizes for the amounts of meats or protein foods. Or how vegetable proteins differ from animal, or how it really doesn't matter what part of the animal it comes from, a piece of muscle meat is the same nutritionally, more or less. This sort of thing used to be taught in schools (I was anyway) but nowadays?

I think we're going to have to revive the Ministry of Food again, like during the war years. Just so that folk actually know how to cope on less. Otherwise we'll also see the return of all sorts of horrid nutritional deficiency diseases, I suspect.

goodgodthatonesevenbigger

Education has to be the answer, unfortunatly when i did home ec at school we learnt as much about preparing convience food as we did about making things from scratch, and i only left school 15 years ago (was it really that long ago :eek:). when i look at my nieces and their food knowledge or rather lack of it comapred to my kids it am quite shocked. I insist that my kids know where there food comes from and how it gets to their plates, i've even involve them in plucking and drawing my yearly delivery fo pheasants. i get them involved in growing the veg i do grow and they love it.

Education should be the way forward, and it should start at a young age. As they say "Knowlegde is power".

euronorris

If only we had a garden....or an allotment...not gonna happen right now though. No allotments available, and we can't risk buying a place here until OH's job provides him with a permanent local contract (still on secondment from UK officially). Not much point trying to move to another rented place as a) it would be expensive and b) we'd be highly unlikely to get a place with a garden without nearly doubling the rent cost!

Still, OH's debts are now clear, and mine are well on the way to being clear. And we've cut back on a lot of junk and taken to o/s style batch cooking.

We will be OK, as we have room in the budget that can see us through this. But I do worry about those on less money, or with a high cost to income ratio.

goodgodthatonesevenbigger

In regards to Allotments, is there not a way to push the government or local Authority to provide more? Surly there is a demand for an increased number of sites?

lollyfin

I am worried a lot about the rising cost of food as at the end of the day there is a point that you cant cut back any further or people start going hungry, we are not near that point yet thankfully but im sure some are
We dont have meat every day,( bacon used to be for bacon butties or fry ups, now if we have it at all its as a main meal), when we do have meat its main meal only
i bulk a lot of things out with lentils, pulses, rice and pasta but what happens when these things become more expensive
i tried growning veg last year but it was a bit disasterous but am determined to give it a go again and to reduce our waste to a minimum
i am shocked when i look in other peeps trolleys (nosy me) and see nothing but ready meals and junk food that stuff is ok very occasionally as a treat but imho is quite vile to eat every day. i know some people cant cook, i couldnt when i left home i lived on pot noodles, toast and digestive biscuits, but why not make the effort to learn, that bit i dont get. I suppose something that might come out of higher food prices is peoples diet may improve as they need more nutrition for less money
*the allotments here in my village were sold off last year so houses can be built, i was v surprised at that as i know there is a demand here but obviously
the money for selling was greater than the rents from allotments