We’ve just had the food inflation data out today. No surprise - food has gone up in price again in the year to February, up 4.5 percent.
The biggest increase in a single item was mince. It went up 23.2 percent. That is the highest recorded jump in mince in two decades.
Mince is a reasonably big deal in this data, I reckon, because mince - and sausages, obviously - is one of those bits of meat we go to when we’re feeling the pinch, right? If you can’t afford the sirloin steak, you go for the mince instead.
So if the so-called cheaper option is becoming that much more expensive, well, that tells you how hard it’s going to be for families to make ends meet.
And it’s, of course, not just the mince. Everything - everything - has gone up in price. There are a few items that have come back down but for the most part, the things you really need - not the snacks, the essentials - have gone up.
And this is going to get worse.
What’s been happening in and around the country for the past 17 days will, without a shadow of a doubt, push food prices up even further.
It’ll start with vegetables because they were already in the ground. Then it’ll move on to things that take longer to produce - wheat-based products, things like bread that take time to grow. Meat will go up. Everything will go up.
Because of the lack of access to urea, fertiliser prices are rising, so on-farm costs go up. Then there’s the fuel cost of getting produce from the farm to - I don’t know - let’s say the bakery, and from the bakery to the supermarket.
And that increased cost is going to land on us.
There’s a lag effect here. What’s going on now will hit us every single month for months to come. They’re talking about six months - but if they’re saying six months, you can assume it’ll be longer than that.
Now, the Nats’ whole strategy for this election was that they’d be fine because the economy would improve, we’d all feel richer, we’d thank them for making the cost-of-living issue go away, their polling would go up and they’d come through at the election on November 7.
That is not going to happen.
The cost-of-living crisis will not be over in November. It will keep hitting us through the things we can’t avoid - petrol for many, but food for everyone.
So the Nats need a new plan - one that requires them to actually do something, rather than just waiting for voters to feel richer. Because we’re not going to.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show. This article was sourced from Newstalk ZB.
3 comments:
Given that National have ignored their campaign promise around co-goverance of water they should be very afraid of the direction they take both away from their political capital and their core voters.
Thank goodness they followed through on their promise to do something about the price gouging supermarket oligopoly, hey Heather? People will remember that on election day and vote accordingly.
Heather, if you remember inflation and inflationary pressures were kicked off by the far left Ardern govt. Once they ended their train wreck term and were booted, inflation was sitting at 8%. It can take years to recover from such destruction. If you don't believe me go back into history to uncover other inflationary times. As mark Twain was supposed to have said ' history may not repeat but it sure does rhyme '. There is an easy way to protect against these times: purchase good quality income producing assets with pricing capability. Act in your own best interests folks. Simple.
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