Rising Food Costs

While shopping for groceries the other day my hubby commented on a slight imperfection on one of the red peppers within a carton of several and started to replace that carton in search of one with more “perfect looking” peppers. I convinced him that we could use that pepper first and that the small amount lost to the blemished area would be insignificant. Too often we want inexpensive yet “perfect” food. You can’t visit a grocery store nowadays without hearing at least one customer complaining about the rising cost of food. Thankfully most consumers realize that it is not the farmers who are to blame for rising food costs. It is due to a combination of skyrocketing energy costs, increasingly restrictive federal and state regulations imposed on producers regarding the use of fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and even water, as well as unpredictable challenges due to ever changing weather patterns that can reduce an abundant crop to rubble in a matter of minutes. Strangely, amidst all of our complaining and gnashing of teeth over rising food costs we still spend less of our paychecks on food than any other country in the world.