Did you know that the price of corn has risen 142 percent in the last 12 months? Of course corn is used in hundreds of different products we buy at the grocery store, and so everyone is going to feel the pain of this price increase. But it isn’t just the price of corn that is going crazy. We are seeing food prices shoot up dramatically all across the industry, and experts are warning that this is just the very beginning. So if you think that food prices are bad now, just wait, because they are going to get a whole lot worse.
Typically, Americans spend approximately 10 percent of their disposable personal incomes on food. The following comes directly from the USDA website…
In 2019, Americans spent an average of 9.5 percent of their disposable personal incomes on food—divided between food at home (4.9 percent) and food away from home (4.6 percent). Between 1960 and 1998, the average share of disposable personal income spent on total food by Americans, on average, fell from 17.0 to 10.1 percent, driven by a declining share of income spent on food at home.
Needless to say, the poorest Americans spend more of their incomes on food than the richest Americans.
According to the USDA, the poorest households spent an average of 36 percent of their disposable personal incomes on food in 2019…
As their incomes rise, households spend more money on food, but it represents a smaller overall budget share. In 2019, households in the lowest income quintile spent an average of $4,400 on food (representing 36.0 percent of income), while households in the highest income quintile spent an average of $13,987 on food (representing 8.0 percent of income).
Needless to say, the final numbers for 2020 will be quite a bit higher, and many
believe that eventually the percentage of disposable personal income that the average U.S. household spends on food will reach 40 percent.
That would mean that many poor households would end up spending well over 50 percent of their personal disposable incomes just on food.
At one time that would have been unimaginable, but now everything is changing. As I noted above, the price of corn his increased 142 percent since this time last year…
Corn prices have jumped roughly 142% over the past year to $7.56 per bushel, the highest price seen in eight years for the crop.
A drought in Brazil and increased demand in China have put pressure on global suppliers.
In other areas we are seeing more moderate inflation, but overall we just witnessed the largest increase in food inflation “in almost nine years”…
