Local Warning Signs of the Cliff Edge

[jaywalker]

Found my ED market Hog Roast today was 25% more than last time I bought it. No criticism of the excellent business selling them: with wholesale prices of pork rising sharply, and the pound falling, unavoidable. But I wonder if this kind of live connection to economic reality (unlike the lags involved in the vertical complexities of the big suppliers) is about as clear a warning of the looming economic cliff edge as one could hope to see.

[Jules-and-Boo]

25%? - that's going the whole hog

[ken78]

who told you that wholesale prices of pork rising sharply.

[rendelharris]

Yes as far as I can ascertain wholesale pork is only a penny more a kilo (less than 1%) now than it was in September 2016 and a whole tenpence cheaper than it was at its high in 2014. No doubt there will be hard times and price rises ahead at some point, but if someone's hiked their prices by 25% and says it's because of the wholesale price, they're telling you porkies!

[ken78]

rendelharris Wrote:

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> Yes as far as I can ascertain wholesale pork is

> only a penny more a kilo (less than 1%) now than

> it was in September 2016 and a whole tenpence

> cheaper than it was at its high in 2014. No doubt

> there will be hard times and price rises ahead at

> some point, but if someone's hiked their prices by

> 25% and says it's because of the wholesale price,

> they're telling you porkies!

i think you are right porkies. but hoe do you know the prices??

[rendelharris]

The magic of t'internet! http://pork.ahdb.org.uk/prices-stats/prices/pig-prices-uk-spec/

[????]

jaywalker Wrote:

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>t as clear a warning of the

> looming economic cliff edge as one could hope to

> see.

The "hope" says it all about what a miserablist you are!

Orwell had a lovely descriptor of "intellectuals" dressing their own prejudices up as fact behind a veneer of pseudo-academic language. I'm going to look it up - it suits you and a couple of others on this forum.

[rendelharris]

Rough night Quids?

[Seabag]

rendelharris Wrote:

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> Rough night Quids?

It's a kind of back handed bit of virtue signaling that ????'S seems to be engaged in

Probably with some heavy irony dropped in for good measure

[Jenny1]

I've never tried the hog roast at the market - though it smells tempting.

I'm more concerned about the rise/potential rise in prices of day to day food items. Butter seems to have set off at an inflationary gallop recently.....

[malumbu]

According to the Archers we could have Polish lamb flooding the markets in a few years so clearly all is well.

[jaywalker]

rendelharris Wrote:

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> The magic of t'internet!

> http://pork.ahdb.org.uk/prices-stats/prices/pig-pr

> ices-uk-spec/

Excellent link. So "32p [per kilo] higher than same time last year" (and a nice graph to show it) from a base that looks like about 110p. Price rise looks about right therefore if you do your pricing annually.

[Loz]

Jenny1 Wrote:

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> I'm more concerned about the rise/potential rise in prices of day to day food items. Butter seems

> to have set off at an inflationary gallop recently.....

We import most of our butter, so it's not surprising.

[JohnL]

jaywalker Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> rendelharris Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > The magic of t'internet!

> >

> http://pork.ahdb.org.uk/prices-stats/prices/pig-pr

>

> > ices-uk-spec/

>

> Excellent link. So "32p higher than same time

> last year" (and a nice graph to show it) from a

> base that looks like about 110p. Price rise looks

> about right therefore if you do your pricing

> annually.

Maybe retailers are putting prices up when wholesale

price rises and just take more profits when it falls.

[Seabag]

The hog roast is pretty blandsville tbh

It smells better than it tastes

I'd stick to sniffing it, that treat hasn't gone up in price.

[dbboy]

Not just on North Cross Road, but I suppose unsurprisingly prices in Sainsbury's are slowly but surely increasing for fresh fruit and in store baked bread. Oranges up from 30p to 40p each, instore baked bread going up 5p a loaf from 1.20 to 1.25. I know the increases are small but prices are going up. is this a result of Brexit? Possibly yes.

[Jeremy]

Seabag Wrote:

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> The hog roast is pretty blandsville tbh

>

> It smells better than it tastes

>

> I'd stick to sniffing it, that treat hasn't gone

> up in price.

I don't like the way they mash up the meat before putting it in the bun. Would rather have a couple of decent slices of meat...

[BrandNewGuy]

dbboy Wrote:

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> Not just on North Cross Road, but I suppose

> unsurprisingly prices in Sainsbury's are slowly

> but surely increasing for fresh fruit and in store

> baked bread. Oranges up from 30p to 40p each,

> instore baked bread going up 5p a loaf from 1.20

> to 1.25. I know the increases are small but prices

> are going up. is this a result of Brexit? Possibly

> yes.

The FAO produce a Food Price Index each month and the latest one indicates steady increases in world food prices:

"The FAO Food Price at near two-year high in January

The FAO Food Price Index* (FFPI) averaged 173.8 points in January 2017, up 3.7 points (2.1 percent) from the revised December value. At this level, the FFPI is at its highest value since February 2015 and as much as 24.5 points (16.4 percent) above its level in the corresponding period last year. The strong rebound in the January value of the FFPI was driven by a surge in international sugar quotations and sharp increases in export prices of cereals as well as vegetable oils. Meat and dairy markets remained more stable."

http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/

[DaveR]

"I know the increases are small but prices are going up. is this a result of Brexit? Possibly yes."

Almost certainly not. Most staple foods are globally traded commodities with price fluctuations arising from all sorts of different events (affecting supply) coupled with increasing/decreasing demand, linked to cultural and demographic changes. Plus UK food retailing is a complex market with lots of different competitive pressures (though maybe not enough competition overall). The first post on this thread was nonsense, and tbh the whole issue is a red herring as far as Brexit/Trump/other populist outrage is concerned.

[red devil]

Supermarkets are always manipulating their prices, for every BOGOF/price reduction, they are adding 10p's here and there to other items to compensate...

[Loz]

DaveR Wrote:

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> "I know the increases are small but prices are

> going up. is this a result of Brexit? Possibly

> yes."

>

> Almost certainly not. Most staple foods are

> globally traded commodities with price

> fluctuations arising from all sorts of different

> events (affecting supply) coupled with

> increasing/decreasing demand, linked to cultural

> and demographic changes.

True, but the Brexit vote did depress the value of the pound by about 10%, and that is going to have an effect on imports.

[Angelina]

10%? so the pork in a bun is just adding it on even above that.

supply and demand....... basic.

they probably realised they were selling it regardless so just added more on top.

[JoeLeg]

Brexit hasn't happened yet, so it hasn't affected prices. I know this may sound like a trite or obvious point, but it's an important one. Market volatility in the wake of the referendum resulted in a fall in sterling against the euro, and the direct result of that is if you purchase your products in euro's but book your profits in sterling then tou need to find what was at one point another 20% just to be standing still. Suppliers I work with in that position all put prices up in the autumn - they had no choice. Those who purchase only in sterling are unaffected. No one knows what will happen in between now and Brexit - ask five economists and you'll get six different answers - but until then, currency exchange issues aside, we face the same problems as anyone else in Europe.

So the real question is what will happen after we exit? We've been eating food that's not priced at a fair reflection of the cost of production for a long time; the government won't want visuals of queues for bread and milk so they'll do anything to reach a deal which has a little impact on food prices as possible.

I have no solid idea what's going to happen, and nor does anyone else. What I believe is that food prices will continue to rise, and that it would happen no matter what's going on with Brexit, and that it will be impossible to work out how much effect Brexit actually has on it. Because for years - decades even - the public hasn't wanted to know how much a pint of milk or a loaf of bread actually costs. Marco Pierre White berated people for saying that chickens shouldn't be as cheap as ?5, because - he said - why shouldn't a poor family be entitled to buy a chicken at that price? But he knows, everyone knows, you can't grow a chicken at that price unless you're a massive agri-business, of the type that's rapidly putting small farmers out of business. So it becomes a conversation about how you want to feed the population?

Food pricing is a horribly tricky discussion which most people ignore. We won't be able to ignore it much longer, and Brexit has very little to do with it.

[dbboy]

Joeleg - thanks for such a solid response.

[jaywalker]

Interesting that price pressures are coming from a big fall in the pound (our open economy) which "has nothing to do with brexit". I guess the fall in the pound after the referendum was just a spurious correlation then?

To be sure there were signs of an upsurge in inflation regardless of the fall in the pound. Several years of quantitative easing eventually shows through. But this is an AND not an OR.

The significant Brexit effect will be if the May government fulfills its promises over immigration. You would then see wage pressures of 1970s proportions - or is this too "nonsense"? Add to that the abolition of the free trade area in an import dependent country and prepare for significant falls in the real standard of living.