{"id":1483826,"date":"2024-02-06T06:55:41","date_gmt":"2024-02-06T06:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=312602"},"modified":"2024-02-06T06:55:41","modified_gmt":"2024-02-06T06:55:41","slug":"the-real-reason-your-grocery-bill-is-still-so-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/02\/06\/the-real-reason-your-grocery-bill-is-still-so-high\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Reason Your Grocery Bill Is Still So High"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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Photo by Franki Chamaki<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

\nAmericans have had to weather much in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic first began, including price inflation of basic necessities. Grocery bills, especially, are a drain on household finances. But, as recent reports show,\u00a0inflation is easing<\/a>\u00a0across many industries, and yet food prices overall have remained stubbornly high. Not only is that an indication of a deep rot at the heart of the food industry, agribusinesses, and corporate grocery chains, but it is also a clear sign that we need to repair our entire food system.<\/p>\n

Reporting on a new Census Bureau survey,\u00a0USA Today\u2019s Sara Chernikoff<\/a>\u00a0found that \u201c[t]he average American household spends more than $1,000 per month on groceries.\u201d And, while it\u2019s not surprising that those residing in expensive states like California have high grocery bills, there\u2019s little relief for those living in states with lower costs of living. An average California family\u2019s weekly grocery bill is $297.72, but an average North Carolina family\u2019s bill is $266.23\u2014nearly as high.<\/p>\n

Attempting to downplay this reality, Paul Donovan, chief economist of UBS Global Wealth Management, wrote in an\u00a0op-ed in the New York Times<\/a>\u00a0that Americans might be overestimating how serious inflation is, feeling the pinch most especially when they buy something as small as a candy bar. \u201c[C]onsumers perceive inflation as higher than it actually is,\u201d wrote Donovan. Further, he claimed, \u201c[h]umans are genetically programmed to emphasize bad news over good news when they make decisions.\u201d Donovan is implying that we\u2019re just imagining high grocery bills.<\/p>\n

In fact, inflation in the grocery industry has been higher than in other industries, rising\u00a025 percent over the past four years compared to 19 percent overall<\/a>, and many have pointed to\u00a0simple greed<\/a>\u00a0as the reason: food prices are high because the companies setting prices think they can get away with padding their profits. Since we all have to eat, naturally this hits lower-income families harder, rather like a regressive tax. A new\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0by the\u00a0Groundwork Collaborative<\/a>\u00a0found that in 2022, \u201cconsumers in the bottom quintile of the income spectrum spent 25 percent of their income on groceries, while those in the highest quintile spent under 3.5 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Economists have attempted to explain the reasons for grocery-related inflation remaining stubbornly high by pointing fingers at supply chain issues, higher labor costs, and agricultural pests. The\u00a0Washington Post<\/a>\u00a0even admitted\u2014albeit with little additional comment\u2014that \u201cconsolidation in the industry gives large chains the ability to keep prices high.\u201d (I\u2019ll return to this critical point below.)<\/p>\n

Fearing that voters feeling the pinch every time they shop for food will punish him at the ballot box, President Joe Biden has taken aim at the food industry. At an event in South Carolina on January 27, 2024, the president\u00a0remarked<\/a>\u00a0that, while \u201cinflation is coming down\u2026 there are still too many corporations in America ripping people off: price gouging, junk fees, greedflation, shrinkflation.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be fair, some foods did become cheaper, such as\u00a0eggs<\/a>. Remember the nationwide\u00a0scramble on eggs<\/a>in the early months of the pandemic with many grocery retailers limiting the number of cartons per customer? But in the years since, prices leveled off. And then they\u00a0whisked up again<\/a>. In fact, eggs are a far better indicator of why Americans are upset about food-related inflation than a Snickers bar.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of short-term interventions that government can apply to help American families cope with the high cost of groceries, and President Biden has implemented many of them. Groundwork Collaborative\u2019s\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0cites an increase in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for the lowest-income Americans, as well as the federal government\u2019s initiative in taking food corporations to court over price gouging, and helping to lower the prices of crop fertilizers.<\/p>\n

But many of these fixes are workarounds to compensate for the massive monopolistic corporatization of our food industry. Recall the point that the\u00a0Washington Post<\/a>\u00a0made with little additional analysis: \u201cconsolidation in the industry gives large chains the ability to keep prices high.\u201d The fact is that only a\u00a0handful of corporations<\/a>\u00a0control the majority of our food system. We are all at the mercy of a small number of big companies. And, unless we make serious systemic changes to our food systems, we will remain so.<\/p>\n

When thinking about longer-term fixes that free our foods from corporate profiteering, the humble egg is once more a good example. When eggs were prized items during the early months of the pandemic, small producers and\u00a0farmers markets<\/a>\u00a0became the only reliable suppliers for many Americans. I recall being even more grateful than usual for my membership with the\u00a0Urban Homestead<\/a>, a small farm in the heart of Pasadena, California, where I live. Each week, I place an order with them for fresh produce and other locally grown foods to supplement my store-bought groceries. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, Urban Homestead was one of the few sources my family had for eggs and fresh produce.<\/p>\n

But such small producers are few and far between. While the lucky ones among us may have access to urban farms, there are\u00a0simply not enough<\/a>\u00a0small-scale growers to feed most Americans. Those farms that do exist operate on razor-thin margins, struggling year after year to remain financially viable. They remain on the outskirts of a massive capitalist playing field that is tilted toward profit-centered, highly subsidized agribusinesses and grocery chains. While\u00a0small farmers, both urban and rural<\/a>, are struggling, food trading companies are\u00a0gobbling up massive profits<\/a>. And the federal government\u2019s\u00a0farm subsidy program<\/a>\u00a0disproportionately benefits large corporate growers rather than the family farmers they are ostensibly aimed at.<\/p>\n

Localizing our food supplies and shortening the chain between food buyers (i.e., all of us) and grocery suppliers ought to be the focus of food-centered government policies. This requires adopting a mindset based on the idea of \u201cfood justice<\/a>,\u201d a topic on which much has been written. We need to make it easier for small-scale farmers to grow food while remaining financially stable, and harder for large-scale corporate agribusinesses to control our food supply. This requires incentivizing small-scale farmers to remain small and sustainable\u2014the opposite of the \u201cgrowth\u201d ideals of corporate profiteers.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers and corporate media outlets are so attached to the idea that food producers and distributors deserve massive profits in exchange for controlling our food supply, that a justice-based approach of de-growth rarely enters their discourse. Rather than the rich eating us (and our wallets), it\u2019s time for us to eat the rich.<\/p>\n

This article was produced by\u00a0<\/em>Economy for All<\/em><\/a>, a project of the Independent Media Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n

The post The Real Reason Your Grocery Bill Is Still So High<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Americans have had to weather much in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic first began, including price inflation of basic necessities. Grocery bills, especially, are a drain on household finances. But, as recent reports show,\u00a0inflation is easing\u00a0across many industries, and yet food prices overall have remained stubbornly high. Not only is that an indication of More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post The Real Reason Your Grocery Bill Is Still So High<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":340,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483826"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/340"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1483826"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1484442,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483826\/revisions\/1484442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1483826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1483826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1483826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}