Food Costs To Rise Due To Weather

Unsurprisingly, these unrelenting heat waves and the worst drought in five decades is going to make itself known in your shopping cart.

“It is one extra kick in the stomach” for low-income families, said Chris G. Christopher, senior principal economist at IHS, a consulting firm. “There’s a lot of people in this country living paycheck to paycheck. This is not a good thing for them.” Higher food prices might also damp consumer sentiment. “Consumers are very sensitive to the price of gas and food,” said Jeet Dutta, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics. “But overall inflation will still look pretty moderate for the rest of the year.” Economists fear a far greater impact outside of the United States because America is a major exporter of a broad variety of agricultural products. Lower production at home means less supply and higher prices abroad. “We’re seeing the price of wheat, corn and beans go up,” said Marc Sadler, the head of the agricultural risk management team at the World Bank, noting that in other regions of the world, like Eastern Europe, yields were also falling.

The above-linked New York Times report also notes that many roads, rails, and power systems are buckling, sometimes literally, under the stress of severe weather.

Willie Nelson - Back To The Start

Yes, this is the Coldplay song. Clip description:

The film, by film-maker Johnny Kelly, depicts the life of a farmer as he slowly turns his family farm into an industrial animal factory before seeing the errors of his ways and opting for a more sustainable future. Both the film and the soundtrack were commissioned by Chipotle to emphasize the importance of developing a sustainable food system.

Study Claims Americans Waste 40% Of The Food That They Purchase

A new study that measures the amount of the American food supply and what is actually eaten claims that we throw out 40% of the food we purchase.

U.S. residents are wasting food like never before. While many Americans feast on turkey and all the fixings today, a new study finds food waste per person has shot up 50 percent since 1974. Some 1,400 calories worth of food is discarded per person each day, which adds up to 150 trillion calories a year. The study finds that about 40 percent of all the food produced in the United States is tossed out. Meanwhile, while some have plenty of food to spare, a recent report by the Department of Agriculture finds the number of U.S. homes lacking "food security," meaning their eating habits were disrupted for lack of money, rose from 4.7 million in 2007 to 6.7 million last year. About 1 billion people worldwide don't have enough to eat, according to the World Food Program. The new estimate of food waste, published in the journal PLoS ONE, is a relatively straightforward calculation: It's the difference between the U.S. food supply and what's actually eaten, which was estimated by using a model of human metabolism and known body weights. The result, from Kevin Hall and colleagues at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, is about 25 percent higher than similar estimates made in recent years.

A different study by an international group last year estimated American wastage at 30%, noting that the world food supply is ample enough to feed everybody.