Food Inflation to soar..... Due to bad weather.

homelessskilledworker

homelessskilledworker wrote: »

One of the greatest achievments in present day Great Britain is the quality of food we now have at historical low cost.
People forget their history only too easily that the average man/woman used to wake up in the morning and by far their biggest concern was putting some kind of food on the table, it was not A ROOF OVER THEIR HEAD.

I love my food and rarely eat anything processed, I open my fridge after a shopping trip and feel blessed with what I can see, lovely red tomatoes, fish from scotland to Thailand, fresh fruit and veg, eggs, all for just a small proportion of my wages.

The food we have been eating in the last thirty years has been exceptional and CHEAP. Hamish as usual makes his silly flippant remarks, but has no vision or understanding of what could happen.
Just try and imagine just for one minute those handful of supermarkets we get in all the towns in the UK today where we just nip down when we are short of something and replace it so easily, just imagine these places one day mostly empty of stock, what then.

We live in paradise right now when it comes to food, and food has the potential to demand a rise in price ten fold and greater, and people will pay it, have to pay it.

I hope what has happened in recent years continues, and we continue getting lovely cheap nosh, but as is often said on here by our wonderful property rampers, "we live in a growing population" and things can change, and I will add an increasingly educated middle class world population growth.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20919306


Just a little example from the news today:)

ed110220

Fella wrote: »

I distinctly remember news stories early in 2012 saying how food prices were going to rise due to the drout conditions affecting much of the UK.

Well, considering 2012 started with an exceptionally dry spring which changed to an exceptionally wet summer, it could well be a combination of drought followed by excess rain.

More seriously though, this all took place against a long-term rise in global food prices due to increases in food consumption outstripping increases in food production. That doesn't look as though it will end anytime soon, no matter what the weather is like in the UK.

John_Pierpoint

homelessskilledworker wrote: »

Just try and imagine just for one minute those handful of supermarkets we get in all the towns in the UK today where we just nip down when we are short of something and replace it so easily, just imagine these places one day mostly empty of stock, what then.

You fell asleep on the train and woke up in North Korea?
If there is one think in this world that makes me want to throw up, it is a chubby "president", and his gangster entourage, from a country of under nourished child poverty.

There must be a dozen such countries.

grizzly1911

ed110220 wrote: »

More seriously though, this all took place against a long-term rise in global food prices due to increases in food consumption outstripping increases in food production. That doesn't look as though it will end anytime soon, no matter what the weather is like in the UK.

Yet we appear to producing less and less for ourselves.

Within 5 miles of where I live, a semi rural area, we can walk to the top of a pronounced hill, which we do frequently and look down on perhaps 10/15 miles of clearly visible countryside and farmland.

When we first came here 15 years ago that patchwork was filled with cows, sheep and fields with crops in. The last few years we have seen considerably less livestock and very little in the way of crops. The fields appear to just be meadow.

In the areas around villages and towns the farmers seem more interested in bailing out selling to developers.

A local farmer who sells his own produce on a market stall was selling 25Kg of spuds for £3.99 18/24months ago, today he was selling them at £6.99.

I accept root crops may be suffering but why should a broad range of prices increase on the back of it or at least that be given as the reason for it?

John_Pierpoint

Agricultural land, that is still rural but not remote, is now owned by "agribusiness men". The only tractor they ride is a Chelsea Tractor. The agricultural land prices are well out of the range of any economic return to agriculture. The land is put down to minimal pasture; I am pleased to say "my farm" (ie the one that surrounds me) is now "horsiculture", subsidised by the Common Agricultural Policy. For our population, now officially 63 - 64 million there are said to be 3.8 million horses at "livery" on land subsidised by £50 - £100 a year per acre of your money.

This land is a good hedge against inflation and in the hands of a good accountant should qualify for 30% - 100% relief from Inheritance Tax.

Unlike other business activities the farming industry is not dragged down by business rates and recovers the VAT paid by upstream suppliers.

The real riches are to be made from planning permission for urban type development - the increase in capital value makes winning the lottery a side line.

Our treble dip recession has put these trends in to reverse but in the mean time there is still money to be made (£10k a year?) for renting space to cell phone masts.

As part of this recession/regression I have witnessed a local farm going from 6 years of weeds back to grain - the proposals for a model village have been abandoned for the moment [though we are eagerly awaiting the new "localism" agenda.]

After this last summer, the contractor farming on behalf of the speculators, is probably wondering why he bothered.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Edgelands-Michael-Symmons-Roberts/dp/0099539772/ref=pd_cp_b_2

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zq87b

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/horsiculture-curbed-to-save-countryside-1417989.html

http://www.marionshoard.co.uk/Documents/Articles/Environment/Edgelands-Remaking-the-Landscape.pdf

http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/31/07/2012/134214/Farmland-prices-rise-around-the-world.htm