Some experts say there's really nothing the government can do about high food prices.
  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
    40·
    3 months ago

    Not a single word of this article explains why. It only says that food prices will remain high, and probably go up more when the tariffs are enacted, and we should just suck it up and deal with it because there’s “nothing anyone can do.”

    Which is obviously bullshit.

    The reason food prices remain high is simple corporate profitmongering, and the (US) government absolutely could do something about it but they won’t. Food is a product – the product – with a notoriously inelastic demand, so retailers and middlemen in every step of the supply chain can and do pad their profits by as much as the market will bear plus a little more on top. Because they know they can get away with it and the vast majority of people will have no choice but to pay whatever it is, or starve.

    The margin on prepared packaged food items is typically in the order of 15-35% per link in the supply chain (supplier -> manufacturer -> distributor -> retailer). Everybody wants too big of a slice of the pie. The government absolutely could step in and pass a law stipulating thou shalt not charge more than 10% (or whatever) over your invoice, under pain of us confiscating every penny above that mark via taxes and using them to pay for soup kitchens. But That Would Be Socialismtm, so it’ll never happen here.

    (And yes, the margins on unprocessed foods like produce and meat are slightly lower.)

    • paraphrand@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      3 months ago

      They basically walk through all that in the video version. Including playing clips of companies saying their raised prices are sticky, and they expect more profit as a result when inflation cools.

      They showed that percentage stuff in an animated graphical explanation of passing costs through to the customer.

      https://youtu.be/22StbCBvWLg

    • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
      4·
      3 months ago

      There will be consequences. Who knows how long it will take. Seems like we’re getting close to that breaking point. There always used to be that fine line were they took just enough so people can survive. Now they are all just extra greedy and took too it all. Tons of people have now used their savings, safety nets, and maxed out credit cards to survive. There’s already more people than ever going homeless and defaulting on loans and credit cards. It won’t be long before an even higher percentage of people have no more options and get desperate. These price increases are just one of the direct causes for failing to survive. I say there’s only a few more years until something big happens.

      Just my opinion. I am one of the people effected by price increases and I feel like I make a decent living. I can’t imagine how people who make even less do it…

  • TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world
    91·
    3 months ago

    Because we’ve passed peak agricultural land. The land committed to growing crops and pasture used for grazing livestock has peaked. The global population, however, continues to increase. There are methods for maximizing yields from farm land, and we haven’t exhausted those, but there’s only so much food that can be produced on a hectare of land. We also have to deal with top soil depletion, the risks of monoculture, the effects climate change could have on crop yields, and many other problems.

    Edit: I think I need to clarify a few things…

    I want to be clear: I am not saying we have reached peak food production. I don’t believe that has happened yet, though I think that could happen soon. I’m saying, we’ve reached peak agricultural land.

    There are ways that we can increase the amount of food produced on the same amount of land, which would allow food production to increase even if the total amount of land committed to agriculture stays the same. However, increasing crop yields might require things like using expensive fertilizers, which increase production costs that get passed on to the consumer.

    There are other ways to increase food production using the same amount of land, like converting animal pasture land to crop land. But, this would make meat, especially beef, much more expensive (since we would be producing a lot less of it). This could be a good thing, however, since a plant based diet is healthier and much better for the environment. Still, people are probably going to be upset about the price of meat going up.

    Capitalism, naturally, also plays a huge role. Many producers are motivated to produce food that will yield the highest possible profits. This, however, does not necessarily maximize efficiency. Land used for raising cattle for instance, produces less calories per hectare than crop land. But people like beef, and they’re willing to pay for it, so it’s profitable for the beef producers, even so much that some might convert crop land to pasture land, thus further reducing efficiency (in calories produced per hectare).

    If we had a different system, we could prioritize efficiency, which would help manage costs. However, even under a different system, we would still have to deal with the fact that land is a finite resource. Even under a maximally efficient food production and distribution system, there would be a limit to how much food we could produce. That being said, it is unequivocally true that such a system would be able to feed many more people than the current one.