Food Prices and You, The Consumer

Our combine harvesting wheat, August 2010

If you are like I am, when I shop for groceries, price matters. I want to buy what I want, but at affordable prices. And when buying produce, I try to only buy items grown in the USA. My reasoning? First, I try to buy local and when I say local, I mean food grown within the USA boundaries; secondly, foreign countries have different standards on what treatments can be used on their crops, so as a safety measure, I choose USA grown food.

Grand-angel, Natalie on the farm, who enjoys the good food her
grandpa grows.  Remember farmers live on their land,
we raise our famiilies here and we grow crops in the safest
and most economically manner possible.  Farmers are here for you!

 Today I heard that Wal-Mart will no longer be stocking “organic foods” as it appears their customers do not want to pay the higher price associated with products grown organically. It’s pretty simple, it comes down to what do you want to pay for? I do think it’s important that the consumer have the choice of conventionally grown food vs. organic, either way, let the consumer pay for what they want. Today’s conventional farmer is geared to producing food or livestock that affords the consumer the best quality at the most reasonable price. This is not a bad thing either as Americans spend just 9.8% of their income on food—less than consumers in any other country. We truly are fortunate to be living in this country and to be able to have those choices.

Today’s farmer not only tries to get their crop to your dinner table in an economical fashion, but we have several factors that play a role in the price of food that you pay. One is nature; we cannot control that one and do the best with what we are dealt. The other factor is environmentalists (or environmental groups) that think only organic is the way to go and then try to garner the public’s support to implement laws about how much space a chicken needs or some other kind of regulation imposed on the farmer who is trying to feed you and your family. So the next time you have the option to vote on animal welfare or some kind of conservational issue that affects the farmer, ask yourself, are you willing to pay the extra price? Need an example? Next time you go to the grocery store, take a look at “organically grown, free range chicken eggs” vs a conventional method of producing eggs and you will most likely find the prices to be $5.49 for organic vs $1.49 per dozen. As I said before, it is your choice. I have a farm blog that is worth re-reading http://www.idahofarmwife.net/2010/01/farmer-perspective-part-ii.html .

Next week the people that feed America will be meeting in Florida for a national conference. From there I will be blogging (hopefully daily) about what we are doing to help you, the consumer, enjoy the high quality of foods that we have all come to expect. So as always, hope you enjoyed this blog and feel free to email me at idahofarmwife@gmail.com.