I guess you could call it a sign of the times we live in–the economic times we live in, I mean. I don’t carefully follow the price of all groceries when I do my weekly shopping, but I do keep a regular eye on the price of a gallon of milk. The recent trend has been instructive.
Not too very long ago–probably a few months–the price of milk was $1.86. It had hovered at about that price for some time. Then, at that point several months ago, the price of milk began to go up. Sharply. In the space of those few months the price of milk went from $1.86 to about $2.89.
That was last week.
This week I went into the store and saw the posted price: $3.25. It was enough to stop a person in their tracks. An increase in the price of milk by $1.00 in a few months is alarming. A jump in price of nearly fifty cents in a week? Unbelievable. I don’t know how anyone can look at a price change like that and not think that something very, very bad is happening. If this trend continues, the price of milk will have easily doubled in the space of a year.
Talk about inflationary pressure.
If I owned a few acres and saw food prices acting up I’d really think about pulling the shovel to start growing my own food, and buying a cow for my own milk. That kind of volatility in food prices raises the specter of not being able to afford to eat.
This observation on the price of milk does need to be tempered a bit. Of all food stuff, milk pricing (at present) appears most volatile, and the first of all grocery goods to show an increase in price. I have not seen the same surge in the price of most other goods. For example, while beef has been on an upward trend, I haven’t seen any near doubling in price.
Yet.
But it would be unwise to take comfort in the mantra, “It’s just something about milk,” and think the pricing surge is a problem limited only to milk. While it is true that there is jiggering going on with milk production, the price increase can’t be brushed aside as simply nothing more than the result of poor governmental regulation of farms, or poor farmer choices. While that may account for some price increase, the truth is that milk is a leading indicator. It is a short term commodity, and reflects the increase in cost of materials more quickly than other products.
Let me explain. In a simplified expression of the milk production cycle, the cow eats grain and then produces milk. The milk is transported to the store where is it bought and consumed by us. Milk doesn’t have a long shelf life, so you’re drinking what was produced not that long ago. If the price of grain (which the cow eats) goes up, then the price of your milk will shortly go up as well. If the cost of gas goes up (which is used to transport the milk) the cost of your milk will go up.
By contrast, a can of beans doesn’t reflect an increase in the cost of materials as quickly. When you buy a can of beans from the store, you are most likely eating last years beans. They have been produced and canned last year, and now are just sitting around waiting to be eaten. The cost of gas to run the farm tractors last year was part of the cost to produce that can of beans. If the price of gas suddenly jumps the price of your can of beans isn’t going to jump as much because the present cost of gas isn’t affecting how much it cost to produce the beans, only how much it cost to recently transport them to the store.
The point of what I am saying is this: the cost of milk more closely follows the present economic situation. Most other food goods lag behind, but the price of milk will give you a good idea what direction the price of everything else is going, and what kind of increase we are looking at. So just because your hamburger hasn’t doubled in price yet, don’t think you can rest easy.
Exactly how the price increases affect different food products only time will tell, and I’m not an economist who could guess. I will say that it does appear that cattle and poultry products look set to be most heavily affected. Firstly, because large amounts of corn (which is used to feed both cattle and poultry) are being diverted from animal feed to ethanol production. The shortage of corn has made the price for corn go up, and when the corn feed of the cow or chicken goes up, the cow and chicken products (meat, milk, eggs) go up as well. On top of this goes the added cost of farming and transporting with higher gas prices. With meat, milk, cheese, butter, and eggs all set to go up, and drastically so, what are we to do?
Eat beans.
As a final note I will say that the one week spike of nearly fifty cents in the price of milk may be something of an anomaly. That particular store was Aldi’s, which is a budget grocery store, and the particular one I shop at is on the small side. I suspect they were unwilling or unable to cushion the rising milk price by disbursing some of the higher expense into other products. Next week the price of milk may very well be re-calibrated somewhat, but I’m sure it will still be higher than a few weeks ago, and even a few weeks ago the price of milk was already dramatically up.
For the record, I didn’t buy the milk at that price. Before I went out shopping I checked the sales flier for Price Chopper, another local grocery store, and saw that they were having a sale on milk. Very interesting coincidence, yes? This week the normal price for milk was $3.09 for a gallon and the sale price was $2.59. I bought the sale milk for some very hefty savings. Now, Price Chopper milk is normally more expensive than Aldi’s milk–and the $3.09 was higher than Aldi’s last week price of $2.89. In this case I simply think that Price Chopper was able to cushion the sudden rise in milk prices better, and decided to add on a milk sale to draw more consumers. I wouldn’t be surprised if next week, or within the next few weeks, the milk price at Aldi’s drops slightly and rises slightly at Price Chopper so that Aldi’s milk is again a few cents cheaper.
The end result?
Milk will still be up, way up.
I think the next twelve months will be economically very interesting, and I don’t mean that in a good way. I just hope you’re not living on a really tight grocery budget.
[For any really picky people out there, I may not have gotten all the milk prices correct down to the very cent. I'm working from memory.]
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Having pontificated on such doom and gloom, I will finish with two mildly weird and anecdotal stories from my life.
Story One:
After getting that great deal on milk at Price Chopper, I was in the parking lot loading groceries into the car when I noticed an elderly lady headed in my direction, crossing from the CVS, and presumably heading toward the Price Chopper on the other side of me. People cross parking lots all the time, so my first instinct was to dismiss her from my mind. But something struck me as a little off. The back of my car was parked close to the front of another car, which didn’t leave much space to get through, and in any case people generally walk in the parking lot aisle, (not between the cars,) and will generally move to avoid someone loading stuff into their vehicle. Instead, this elderly lady was looking directly at me, and heading right toward me.
I keep loading my groceries, figuring I’m either just imagining it or else she just thinks I look funny, and in either case I’m not going to make an awkward situation by staring back. By that time she is practically upon me, and is still heading directly for me, and looking at me in that direct way that indicates someone who wishes to speak with you. So I turn around to ask her if there is anything I can do for her, supposing that perhaps she is in some type of distress and she was looking for me to give her aid.
Before I could open my mouth she warmly said, “So, how many children do you have?”
Uhhh . . . Brain freeze. Nothing like a question totally and completely out of the blue that you are in no way expecting. My first inclination is to ask back, “What made you ask that question?” Instead, I guess that the question was spurred by the amount of groceries I was putting into the trunk. So I say, “No. I don’t have any kids. I live with my ailing grandparents. I’m buying groceries for them. I buy all the groceries for the week at once, and Grandpa likes his desserts.” I figure that is enough of an explanation for the amount.
“Oh, that’s so very nice. God bless you,” she says, and continues on toward the grocery store.
It was a very odd encounter. The old lady seemed very kind and friendly, if rather nosy for asking such a question, so I didn’t think I just had a run-in with a stalker or child snatcher. But it did make me wonder if there was something about me that would spark such a question. After all, I was only buying a week’s worth of groceries for me, Grandma, and Grandpa. It wasn’t that many groceries. I could have been a young man with a wife or girlfriend and no kids, or some bachelor loading up on groceries for a weekend of partying with my friends. What would inspire someone to walk up to a complete stranger (a man no less!) and ask him how many little ones he has, when he doesn’t have a single kid with him?
I dunno. Maybe I exude some kind of domesticated fatherly charm that says I just must have several little tykes running about back home along with a lovely wife? I suppose that is better than exuding some kind of dangerous and deranged aura. Certainly, I’ve readily been mistaken as the father of my siblings–some of whom are no more than a few years younger than myself. I had always figured that had more to do with my facial hair, a feature that in the eyes of some people apparently adds twenty years to my real age. But this was the first time I was asked how many children I had when no children–young or old–were present.
Life is a little strange sometimes.
Story Two:
Talk about life being a little strange.
Every few weeks Grandma writes me out a check to cover groceries and other miscellaneous expenses. I then go to her bank and cash the check. This saves Grandma from being required to go out to the bank and withdrawing the money herself. So it was that last week found me waiting in line at the bank.
When my turn finally came I stepped up to one of the tellers with check and driver’s license (for ID purposes) and slid them across the counter. The teller picked them up and without so much as a pause looked at me and said, “You probably don’t remember me, but I know you from way back.”
Talk about unexpected. I am generally very bad at remembering names, but I’m generally pretty good at remembering faces, and this young lady sitting behind the counter was coming up as a complete blank. At that point my mind was working very fast, trying to flip through the faces of every young woman with whom I had even remotely come into contact, and still I didn’t have even a glimmer. I had an idea things were about to get very awkward. My feeling was along the lines of, “Lady, I don’t know who you think I am, but you’ve made a mistake. I can probably count all the young ladies that I know on one hand, and two of them are my sisters. I can probably count all the young ladies that might possibly remotely know my name on my other hand, and you’re not one of them. I don’t know who you are, and you’ve made a mistake. You don’t know me.”
Instead of being so blunt, I decided to get to the bottom of this by the process of elimination, so I asked, “From when do you know me?”
“I’m A.J.” she said, “And your parents used to go to the same church as my parents.”
Well, if we were talking about way back that was at least feasible, but it would have to be back to when I was six or under. In other words, A.J. was right–that long ago I wouldn’t know her, and I still wasn’t sure she really knew me.
So I asked, “What church?”
She gave the location of the church (which didn’t help the memories of the six year old me) and then mentioned another family that I still do know. At that point I became a little amazed and perplexed, because–as my family had indisputably gone to that church–it seemed the young teller did indeed know me from waaaay back. We’re talking twenty years ago. I was a little boy of about five years old then. How anyone can recognize a boy of five years of age in the man twenty years later after only 30 seconds of looking at his driver’s license is beyond me.
But, having been duly identified, I was obligated to exchange pleasantries with this complete stranger who knew me. A.J. tried to jog my memory by saying how her family had taken us to the zoo, but with no success. I do have memories from that time in my life, but apparently not of her family, or those events–or at least I wasn’t as good at adding twenty years to my memories and placing them with the young lady sitting in front of me. So it ended in the slightly awkward exchanges of:
“And so how are you?”
“Oh, I’m married and I have two kids now. And what are you doing these days?”
“Taking care of my grandparents. And I write when I can.”
So I departed, wondering at the strangeness of life and trying to fix A.J.’s name in my mind so on the next occasion I might ask my Mom exactly who was that woman?
Mom did remember them, and they did indeed take us to the zoo. After searching through her memory Mom said A.J. was probably five or seven years older than me, meaning she was ten or twelve years old at the time we knew them, which made me feel a little better about the fact that she remembered me so well, and I not her at all. Even so, I find it a little flabbergasting that she could recognize me after looking at my driver’s license for only thirty seconds and so smoothly introduce herself. When I expressed that surprise to A.J., she said, “Well, you do have an unusual name.” True, but I don’t know as I would remember the unusual name of some little boy or girl I knew when I was twelve–especially not twenty years later. And if somehow I did remember their name, and even somehow thought the person standing in front of me twenty years later might be the same person–I don’t think I would ever dare introduce myself.
I guess the world has all types of people, including those with such good memories, and such outgoing dispositions that they can smoothly introduce themselves to someone they last saw as a five-year-old kid.
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