While a litre of orange juice is 57p in Lidl, it sells for 99p in the Co-op. Such products, and staple foods like eggs, bread, frozen peas, butter and cheese have seen price rises of between 20 and 30 per cent in mainstream supermarkets. Mysupermarket.co.uk, which collates supermarket prices daily, puts the overall rise last year at 12 per cent. That means the average family's shopping bill has gone up by £750 a year.
Jacques Diouf, head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, spoke recently of a 'very serious crisis' brought about by the rise in food prices and the rise in the oil price. Various global economic bodies are forecasting rises of between 10 per cent and 50 per cent over the next decade.
There have been four chief drivers of food price inflation in the last two years.
1. the huge rise in oil prices
2 climate: drought, hurricanes and floods around the world last year made for terrible harvests.
3. the massive rise in the price of the staple-food commodities due to market speculation and the increasing demand for crops for Biofuels.
4. the financial boom in India and China. Around the world, and through history, people have eaten more meat as they have become richer. This is called the nutrition transition and it's now happening, very quickly, in the two most populous nations on the planet.
