Have you noticed any attitude changes with food prices going up?

[journey11]

I'm a price memorizer! Its a bad habit, I'll get my list and coupons and goto the stores (yes, I easily hit 2-3 stores to get the best deals). I need flour for baking, sugar and milk. Sometimes I get coupons for them, sometimes I don't

No, it's a good habit! That really helps...then you know when the price has gone about as low as it's gonna go. My MIL taught me how to coupon when I was first married and I used to be able to do really well, but I think they are not putting out as many useful coupons anymore (noticed it a couple years ago). I don't want coupons to try new things (which is just ramped up versions of the old things). I want coupons for things I actually use regularly! I do better with online coupons than the newspaper ones. I don't keep a record book of the sale prices of things, but they say you should. Then you know when to jump in there with your coupon! I noticed a lot of the coupons expire quicker than they used to as well. I think now they are more geared toward getting you to make impulse buys, rather just than promoting their product over another brand. The game has definitely changed...and I don't think we're going to see the sale prices go as low as they used to anymore.

We also made all our own baby food when my daughter was on it. We'd make a trip to the orchard or the farmers market and buy by the bushel when we could. It saved us easily a few hundred dollars. When we saw that some of the baby foods were going for a dollar a jar, and even 60+ cents a jar for the generic brand food we were shocked. Prep, steam and into the food processer. We'd make big batches of it, (Im talking like a dozen ice cube trays) so when we made baby food, we MADE baby food. We found that ice cube trays make 1 oz. cubes. So bought a bunch of ice cube trays from the dollar store and went to town. Plus was easy to keep track of how much food we fed with the cubes all being 1oz.

That is what we did too and it just made so much sense to do it that way. Quick to mix up and the ice cube portions were just as quick to prepare. If I had to travel, I just took a little thermos bag with me with an ice pack in the bottom...no big deal. The jarred foods are barely more convenient (IS THERE REALLY ANYTHING CONVENIENT WHEN YOU HAVE A BABY?--LOL.) Plus you get the peace of mind of knowing what is in their food. If I had to buy something, I could get organic; otherwise most things came from my garden, my own chicken, and deer we processed ourselves.

I had to go to the store yesterday and was really in sticker shock over how much things have jumped since the week before! Not by a couple of cents...dollars on some things. Almost $4 for a gallon of store-brand orange juice (SUGAR WATER) for my sick hubby. If he wasn't already so cranky I would have told him he was out of luck!

Yep, just going to have to get even more serious in the garden this year. I learned to pressure can last year, so I know I can really put that to good use.

I envy people who make their own cheese, yougurt, ham, etc.... There's only so much I can squeeze on my one acre. And in paying our dues as a young married couple, I can't take on too much all at once, financially. I try to add one new endeavor a year. Last year was bees. This year it's turkeys.

 

[Kim_NC]

Well, we have very few commercial cans of anything in our cupboards. We grow, can and freeze almost everything we eat.

And we're one of those folks at the farmers markets selling to others. At this time of year we have no produce to speak of. We take our pastured meats, jams/jellies, homemade breads, and a line of local cheese and butter that we carry.

Anyway, gardening is part of our way of life. No problem getting help.

We saw heirloom tomatoes in a Whole Foods store for $4.00/lb today! Of course, it's Winter and they have the only heirloom tomatoes around. We were there shopping the seafood department. LOL....unfortunately that's the one thing we can't grow ourselves.

We have found that more and more people are trying to support our local markets. We attend 2 other smaller markets during May-Oct., plus the year-round indoor market. People seem to be getting very concerned about the food supply and the quality of their food (ie, organic, non-GMO, etc.), and wanting personal contact with those who actually grow what they're eating.

It's wise for people to buy from local farmers. DH & I talk about this often. If something were to happen to the food supply chains, there would be no way local farmers could meet demand in many areas. In such a scenario, farmers like us will supply those long standing customers who've always bought from us.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

Time for them to market direct to consumers instead of relying on a system that treats them like slaves.

in our area we have winter farmers markets! but OUCH! their prices were waaaay higher than i ever expected!

Vfem i love the idea of renting out some of your gardening space! i'm thinking this year about doing some raised beds and this gives me some ideas how to help raise the funds to do it! my parents already pay me a little to grow and supply them with fresh veggies and eggs, but having my close neighbors doing it too would be great!

In your part of the country Winter veggies almost have to be hot house grown. They're always expensive especially with the price of fuel and electricity going up.

actually, what i mostly saw everyone selling were potatoes, carrots, onions, pumpkins and winter squashes. nothing that i could see would have been grown in the greenhouse (other than the market was being held in the HUGE part of the greenhouse at Wentworth Greenhouse!) it was mostly stuff that had a looong storage life!

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

here's and article i saw a couple of days ago and just found again about the global rise in food costs. i don't think i fully believe that the rise in costs aren't based on 'speculators' this time around. i think it is partially the greed from the 'middle men' between the markets and the consumers!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/worldeconomyfoodinflation

 

[wifezilla]

There is a whole long thread about this over on sufficientself.com. A couple of us thought the crop reports from last year sounded phony baloney based on how many areas had to file for disaster relief. One of the farmers said they had the same volume of corn, but the nutrition value wasn't as high as previous years and their cows were going through it rather quickly.
http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4166

From there we kind of tracked news around the world about food crops.
http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=7091