Boycott Loblaws & Empire!
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It’s hard to boycott the price gouging bastards when it’s just 3 companies owning the entire market of what you literally need to buy every week to live.
The best I can do is make maximum use of my local farmer’s market but it’s closed for the season now. Which is a bummer because not only it was cheaper, but the produce was fresher and of higher quality.
My parents have had decent success packaging and freezing some farm stand stuff for later.
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Tough to boycott the lowest-price option in my area.
I’m genuinely curious: have you looked into co ops in your area? Some deliver!
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My parents have had decent success packaging and freezing some farm stand stuff for later.
Your folks have the right idea! I’ll add that canning certain things is also a great skill to learn
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Ugh, I feel this in the USA too. I went to get some groceries the other day - purposely “just picking up a few things.” I live in an area where you have to bring your own bags, and I only brought two, so I was careful with my limits.
It was still sticker shock at the register, as my total was between $90-$100 USD. What the actual fuck.
I’m sorry you’re all dealing with the same thing north of the border. I also understand if my comment isn’t welcome in this community - I’ll delete it if so. I just found the meme painfully relatable and wanted to commiserate.
American’s are still welcome to Canada, just leave the MAGA bullshit at the door. We’re still sibling states. Even though our older brother is increasingly hateful and violent, you’re still our brother. We’re worried about you. We won’t tolerate any of your abuse though.
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Ugh, I feel this in the USA too. I went to get some groceries the other day - purposely “just picking up a few things.” I live in an area where you have to bring your own bags, and I only brought two, so I was careful with my limits.
It was still sticker shock at the register, as my total was between $90-$100 USD. What the actual fuck.
I’m sorry you’re all dealing with the same thing north of the border. I also understand if my comment isn’t welcome in this community - I’ll delete it if so. I just found the meme painfully relatable and wanted to commiserate.
Same hit in the UK, same hit in Germany.
(With the exception of LIDL, for some reason they understand how to keep prices down)
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American’s are still welcome to Canada, just leave the MAGA bullshit at the door. We’re still sibling states. Even though our older brother is increasingly hateful and violent, you’re still our brother. We’re worried about you. We won’t tolerate any of your abuse though.
I love Canada, wish I could move there lol
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Grow your own = Insanely cheap, very easy, super delicious.
Not going to be anywhere near enough food for one person unless you have more land available for yourself than people in a city or even most modern suburban developments are likely to have. Also takes a lot of time and effort if you want more than the occasional tomato, cucumber, lettuce head or zucchini to enrich your diet a bit. (Can be fun on a small scale, though.)
Farmer’s market = Cheap, convenient, super delicious and big.variety.
Nice, but takes a lot of planning, storage and home cooking to work out. You may need to start planning your life around when the farmer’s markets are and what they carry. Also, the variety is necessarily limited to what farmers in your area are growing.
Friends with chickens = Delicious high quality free eggs offloaded onto you every week.
Cool if you got those, but most people don’t.
Land available isn’t true at all. A sunny windowsill could provide a family with herbs, leafy greens or something like tomatoes. Check out the kratky method for a pretty cheap introduction to hydroponics
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I manage a produce department of an IGA, and for years I’ve had the freedom to order produce from cheaper third-parties to keep my prices low. I have always maintained a 99¢ /lb. to $1.99 /lb. maximum sale price on bulk apples, but just recently Sobeys (our parent company) forced our largest third-party supplier to become an “official ordering partner” and to match all of their costing or lose our business. Now those third-parties are pointless to order from unless I am shorted a bunch of produce from our warehouse. And my apples? $2.49 /lb. to $4.99 /lb., depending on the variety. An absolute fucking joke.
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Yes, Loblaws, Sobeys and gang are gouging everyone.
But climate change is a big factor in rising food prices too.
Remember olive oil going up in price? Crop failure due to bad weather.
Orange juice? Disease due to climate change.
Coffee prices rising right now? Take a guess.
It’s only beginning.
Orange juice? Disease due to climate change.
That’s very recent.
A more historical look at orange production - particularly in Florida - shows it peaked in the early '00s at 250M boxes, then plunged to 12M boxes thanks to disease, hurricanes, and real estate development.
But the root reason is that orange surpluses were thinning profits. Drastic reduction in production pushed up unit prices without materially increasing costs.
Orange agribusiness is doing fine. It’s the retail purchases who are eating shit
Remember olive oil going up in price? Crop failure due to bad weather.
The destruction of historical olive groves has been a major Israeli tool for displacing native Arab peoples.
This isn’t just bad weather. It’s manufactured poverty through ethnic cleansing.
We’re seeing similar events in Central Africa, Ukraine, the Kashmir region of India, and now the US military campaign against Venezuelan fishermen.
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Orange juice? Disease due to climate change.
That’s very recent.
A more historical look at orange production - particularly in Florida - shows it peaked in the early '00s at 250M boxes, then plunged to 12M boxes thanks to disease, hurricanes, and real estate development.
But the root reason is that orange surpluses were thinning profits. Drastic reduction in production pushed up unit prices without materially increasing costs.
Orange agribusiness is doing fine. It’s the retail purchases who are eating shit
Remember olive oil going up in price? Crop failure due to bad weather.
The destruction of historical olive groves has been a major Israeli tool for displacing native Arab peoples.
This isn’t just bad weather. It’s manufactured poverty through ethnic cleansing.
We’re seeing similar events in Central Africa, Ukraine, the Kashmir region of India, and now the US military campaign against Venezuelan fishermen.
Olive grove destruction in Palestine is a horrible part of the genocide. But not a factor in olive oil price rises in Canada. The stuff we see here is produced in Spain, Italy, Tunisia, Greece etc.
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Ugh, I feel this in the USA too. I went to get some groceries the other day - purposely “just picking up a few things.” I live in an area where you have to bring your own bags, and I only brought two, so I was careful with my limits.
It was still sticker shock at the register, as my total was between $90-$100 USD. What the actual fuck.
I’m sorry you’re all dealing with the same thing north of the border. I also understand if my comment isn’t welcome in this community - I’ll delete it if so. I just found the meme painfully relatable and wanted to commiserate.
You’re welcome. We are upset with the USA, not Americans.
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Someone in another Lemmy post suggested CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). In essence, you give farmers a down payment for a period of time and in exchange you get share of the harvest.
I was looking at the prices and to get two seasons (Summer and Winter) of both produce and meat would cost $1,500ish a year. I would be pay about $125 a month. Which is less than the almost $200 a month, I pay.
It’s definitely something I will be doing in the future.
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Meanwhile we still have people screaming about the Sunshine list in Ontario, because it stayed at $100,000 while inflation continued to rise. If it stayed true to purpose, it would be closer to $200,000 now.
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Grow your own = Insanely cheap, very easy, super delicious.
Not going to be anywhere near enough food for one person unless you have more land available for yourself than people in a city or even most modern suburban developments are likely to have. Also takes a lot of time and effort if you want more than the occasional tomato, cucumber, lettuce head or zucchini to enrich your diet a bit. (Can be fun on a small scale, though.)
Farmer’s market = Cheap, convenient, super delicious and big.variety.
Nice, but takes a lot of planning, storage and home cooking to work out. You may need to start planning your life around when the farmer’s markets are and what they carry. Also, the variety is necessarily limited to what farmers in your area are growing.
Friends with chickens = Delicious high quality free eggs offloaded onto you every week.
Cool if you got those, but most people don’t.
Not going to be anywhere near enough food for one person unless you have more land available for yourself than people in a city or even most modern suburban developments are likely to have.
i did a study on area needed for food production a while ago, and IIRC
- per person, about 1000 m² are needed to feed them. depends a bit on where you live though
- fertile land produces around 3.5 t of grains /ha on average. with modern technology, the peak is 7.5 t/ha
- by far the most area is needed to grow calorie-heavy foods. like, you could get far with 30 m² for yourself if you only plant vegetables and buy the grains at the supermarket
- grains are really cheap, compared to vegetables. that’s because vegetables are labor-intensive (difficult to automate because they’re often fragile and sensitive) while grains can be automated on ultra-large-scale farms with farming machines, so they’re really cheap.
Note: 1 t = 1000 kg, grains = cereals
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This is the way, though.
Grow your own = Insanely cheap, very easy, super delicious.
Farmer’s market = Cheap, convenient, super delicious and big.variety.
Friends with chickens = Delicious high quality free eggs offloaded onto you every week.
Grocery store = Low quality crap; twice the price. An unpleasant experience of other miserable people and awful music. A chore of a thing to do. The whole layout trying to be themed like a fancy farmer’s market but you can’t even find the plum vinegar!
Farmers markets have never been cheaper where I live. Fresher maybe, but as expensive or more expensive than supermarket produce.
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A bag like that at SuperStore (Canada) for us is around $50, but if I go to the smaller chain (Fruiticana) its like $18… I’m always stunned and think they forgot to scan some items
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Valid concerns. I won’t ignore the orphan crushing machine and every situation is different, but a lot of food can be grown in an apartment.
I had a 300sqft bachelor pad in Vancouver where I managed to grow tomatoes, goji berries, greens and ALL the herbs. I kept my herbs in pots under a full spectrum light indoors, clipping and drying as they grew out. After set-up I only had to water, fertilize sometimes, and prune as needed. Greens, I kept harvesting young and re-seeding. Aside from watering, it took almost no effort to put a significant dent in my grocery bill.
Now, I have a 4x8ft fenced garden in a shared yard where I grow so much I barely buy produce in the summer. Aside from weeding, sprouting and transplanting in the spring, the main labour is watering, which only takes like five minutes. I get my seeds from things I eat or the public library seed share, so those are free, too.
I legit grew three pumpkins, four ziplock bags of sunflower seeds, beets, snap peas, opium poppies, carrots, tomatoes, gooseberries, strawberries and still have a herb shelf inside.
I get that’s still not a year’s worth a food, but it’s a lot for tiny bit of dirt, considering I knew nothing about gardening before.
Oh but get GMO pumpkin seeds. White mildew rot is a pain in the ass and everywhere. And a dehydrator if you don’t know how to deal with lots of food at once, you can make chips and crackers out of anything.
I’m pretty lucky in that my friends hunt, too, so I get a butt load of deer meat every fall.
Yeah. I don’t have large space, but grow my winter and my summer vegetables, then obviously herbs. Plenty for two people. All I need to do is get meat.
Literally about to have a meal now and it’ll be eggs benedict on toast with spinach and mushrooms. Only thing not from the yard or friends is the bread.
Or I could go down the road and get the same meal, shittier, for $20.
Edit: Didn’t even use the bread. Decided to go omlette. But I did slot some sliced ham in there which was also store bought.
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So envious of all of you that have cheap farmer’s markets. Where I am, my choices are
- Grocery store: cheap, highly variable quality, support the conglomerates
- Farmer’s market: expensive, probably higher quality, support local farmers
They’re so much fun to walk through though. If only I could actually afford to buy from them.
All I can guess is our farmers haven’t been given any initiative to sell to a middle man (store) that marks up. In essence, a farmer’s market is supposed to be like going directly to the manufacturer and telling the retailer to fuck off. The farmer is happy, I’m happy, it works.
If your farmer’s markets are expensive, I’m guessing it may be novelty or hobbiest produce out to make a quick buck of a trend.
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Yeah. I don’t have large space, but grow my winter and my summer vegetables, then obviously herbs. Plenty for two people. All I need to do is get meat.
Literally about to have a meal now and it’ll be eggs benedict on toast with spinach and mushrooms. Only thing not from the yard or friends is the bread.
Or I could go down the road and get the same meal, shittier, for $20.
Edit: Didn’t even use the bread. Decided to go omlette. But I did slot some sliced ham in there which was also store bought.
Sounds fantastic. Foraged mushrooms are the best. I feel the same way about going out for food unless it’s something difficult or expensive to make on my own. That said, one of my favorite meals is a bowl of peas.
I’ve sent city hall and my mp an obnoxious amount of e-mails about allowing urban chickens here. When they get their heads out of their asses and shut down the bylaw I’ll have a coop built before the ink dries.
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I’m genuinely curious: have you looked into co ops in your area? Some deliver!
The only ones I know of locally are those red-branded “Co-op” stores, but where I’m at they’re all gas stations with only convenience stores so everything is 1.5-2x a grocery store. Google couldn’t find me anything either.
