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UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

grocerygazette.co.uk

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Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#981

Post by hkt »

algoatecorn wrote: post #437
hkt wrote: post #151

Yet another sector where investment is low and prices are high. Over winter tomatoes were in short supply, not because we couldn't grow them, but because the methods of heating greenhouses were too expensive. CO2 heaters use gas in largely uninsulated greenhouses. A bit of creativity (solar thermal with storage supplying radiators) or just modernity (air source heat pumps) would have solved this problem. Alas, there…

Greenhouses are a tiny sliver of overall food production. The rest of agriculture is heavily biased toward the energy density of fossil fuel, particularly nat gas and diesel. The innovation required to move away from the actual energy problem in agriculture is much greater than a bit of creativity

Moving away from these kinds of farming methods is really not as hard as people suppose. For a start, composting food waste would produce a carbon neutral source of fertiliser that would cover fairly large amounts of domestic need. Measures like these are really not hard. There's a glut of alternatives available, government simply does nothing to aid in the transition.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#982

Post by badcppdev »

pharmakom wrote: post #955
Veen wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In general there seems to be a weird zeitgeist of negative exceptionalism in the UK at the moment. Especially on Hacker News. I tend to avoid UK-based posts on here because the content is fairly predictable: the UK is going to shit and Brexit is to blame, repeated ad nauseam in the absence of any evidence that it's true. If I wanted thoughtless UK doom mongering, I'd read the Guardian or the NYT.

There is some evidence: - Governemtn forecast 4% lower GDP than without Brexit - UK car industry significant decline in output since 2015 (around 30% IIRC) - People who immigrated here for work (and have the right to stay) are choosing to leave - Low investment compared to comparable regions / countries - Turmoil around NI - Banking migrating to Europe and New York in particular - Trade deals not materialising It’s n…

What is the difference between your list and the predictions being made by the Remain group during the Brexit 'debates'?

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#983

Post by NovaDudely »

Kailhus wrote: post #930
NovaDudely wrote: post #886

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a 2007 book by john Michael Greer - "The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age". It was the first in 10 books on the subject of industrial decline over the course of a few centuries. I wish so badly that he was wrong about these things, but every day it looks a little more like he got an absolute home run on this topic. The only other advice I would give to people is, if there is some…

Do you ‘need’ a house though?

I say one does need a house (well a home).

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#984

Post by rpmason »

antisthenes wrote: post #964
rpmason wrote: post #691

I believe that we can make a small dent on this problem if we improve the technology that runs greenhouses. (My bias: I work for a startup that is working on this and I'm kind of obsessed with the industry.) Here is what current greenhouse tech looks like: a human (called a grower) uses their intuition to adjust hundreds of settings that parameterise what the actuators should do in different circumstances. For exampl…

Here's the thing: Plants don't really give a shit. Implementing a convoluted tech solution in greenhouses for an additional 5% efficiency will never pay back for itself. > (My bias: I work for a startup that is working on this and I'm kind of obsessed with the industry.) I suggest you actually learn more about growing plants than optimizing 20 different atmospheric and HVAC parameters. Many of these recent startups f…

> I suggest you actually learn more about growing plants

We have people with decades of experience operating 70+ Ha of greenhouses in the team, so I don't think a lack of knowledge about the industry or plants is an issue. Perhaps my comment gave you the wrong impression about us.

> they couldn't figure out that growing lettuce indoors hydroponically doesn't actually make anyone any money.

It is quite easy to refute that statement that nobody can make money growing lettuce indoors by looking at Gotham Greens, or Revol Greens (https://www.revolgreens.com/). What is true is there are a number of agtech startups who raised a lot of money, did not really know what they were doing and imploded, I can agree with you on that.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'efficiency', so I am assuming you mean yield. Have you ever looked at the income statement for a commercial greenhouse? From the data we've seen from operators inside the industry a 5% increase in yield roughly double your profits (consider that the costs for energy, labour, supplies is fairly fixed, so increases in revenue then flow down to the bottom line).

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#985

Post by tiborsaas »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #172
andy_ppp wrote: post #137

I cannot believe supermarkets these days, it is insane the increases in prices, I’ve seen £5 for a tube of normal toothpaste and £6 for a tiny Pizza that is sometimes available for £3. How people on modest salaries survive I don’t know. Quite often I’m starting to notice dark patterns in pricing where things you normally didn’t worry about will have randomly increased by £2-3 and you get the checkout and you’ve spent…

I saw $6.99 for a pack of 12 flour tortillas yesterday. Could not believe it. At that price I'll try making my own.

This weekend I got a pack of 4 for $4.18 in Budapest ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#986

Post by rpmason »

supergirl wrote: post #918
rpmason wrote: post #691

I believe that we can make a small dent on this problem if we improve the technology that runs greenhouses. (My bias: I work for a startup that is working on this and I'm kind of obsessed with the industry.) Here is what current greenhouse tech looks like: a human (called a grower) uses their intuition to adjust hundreds of settings that parameterise what the actuators should do in different circumstances. For exampl…

how much of the total cost of a tomato actually goes to the farmer? less than 10% wouldn’t surprise me

Yes, if you mean how much profit does the farmer make I think you are spot on.

Pricing fluctuates with the season, variety but from the data I've seen a farmer in the US might sell to the distributor at $2/kg, but after paying all their costs (packaging, labour, energy, supplies, depreciation) the pre-tax profit might be around $0.16/kg - so 8%, and that's probably a pretty good year! It's a low margin, high volume kind of business.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#987

Post by fennecfoxy »

Tade0 wrote: post #459
justsocrateasin wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you've never actually set foot in a supermarket, have you??

This was a reference to some politician (I don't recall which) not knowing the price of a single banana.

You're confusing the Arrested Development scene with this video probably: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5RiYxGahps of Boris Johnson claiming to eat Gregg's all the time, but not knowing the price (which I could excuse him for; I have Gregg's now & then & I can only remember the price as being "maybe a little over 1£".

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#988

Post by fennecfoxy »

manojlds wrote: post #629
_Wintermute wrote: post #87

For reference, that's a fairly average value for Europe at the moment. Not sure why the UK is being singled out. https://i.redd.it/8hbhiqhowjpa1.png

Part of the reason is UK ran out of tomatoes, peppers etc. EU didn't have the same issues. Source: live in UK

But the core reason for those shortages were poor weather in Spain etc where the produce is grown, I'd be surprised if the EU didn't have the same issues.

I wouldn't be surprised if those countries such as Spain reduced the amount available for export so that they can meet demand for local markets though, but capitalism would dictate that they sell to the highest bidder instead.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#989

Post by fennecfoxy »

Kailhus wrote: post #930
NovaDudely wrote: post #886

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a 2007 book by john Michael Greer - "The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age". It was the first in 10 books on the subject of industrial decline over the course of a few centuries. I wish so badly that he was wrong about these things, but every day it looks a little more like he got an absolute home run on this topic. The only other advice I would give to people is, if there is some…

Do you ‘need’ a house though?

Yes. People need to own their own homes, especially Millennials who are struggling to do this (and Zoomers will, too) because not only has pension age been going up while Millennials have been growing up, but the amount hasn't really changed for the better either (pension age should go down and amount goes up and a sign of economic progress).

Which means that pensioners NEED to own their own homes instead of paying rent because the entire system is still designed around that fact. I'm sure it's possible to be renting as a pensioner but it's not ideal at all.

People should own their own homes. People should be restricted to owning only a single home. Homes should be easily transferrable and prices should be heavily restricted/controlled. But that'll never happen, it's too late for that as a lot of false value has already been extracted from them so people who own homes with overblown prices have paid that amount. It's the ones that paid nothing for their house and now see it worth .5-1mn that need a forced reality check. Otherwise houses are just poker chips for rich people; I live in London and even in the outer areas new apartments are being built with each apartment going for 700k-1mn£...for a fucking apartment.

Re: UK: Food inflation rises to 18.2% as it hits highest rate in over 45 years

#990

Post by m000 »

bumby wrote: post #967
taurath wrote: post #874

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supermarkets in my area have a near monopoly and don’t meaningfully compete anymore - they can charge whatever people will pay. It’s all owned by Kroger and the nearest non Kroger supermarket is a dozen miles away.

Grocery chains are notoriously low-margin businesses though. Maybe a few places are able to gouge, but as a whole, they cannot and still be low-margin as an industry.

Having a low absolute profit margin compared to other business does not mean that doubling it should not count as price gouging.
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