Damn you, internet memes
Making bacon prices go up:
Bringing home the bacon is getting more expensive.
Whether it’s a bacon cheeseburger from a local diner or packs of bacon on grocery store shelves, you can expect to pay a higher price for your favorite cured meat until demand simmers down or more hogs are bred.
Last week, prices of pork bellies — from which bacon is cut — jumped to an all-time high of $1.42 a pound. Prices have soared more than 200% from a year ago.
August 24th, 2010 at 11:11 am
Yes, this is more important than most people realize. Pork Bellies has long been an economic indicator in the commodaties market. When Pork Bellies jump, people listen! ITs a bad omen that the economy is worse off than people realize.
August 24th, 2010 at 11:46 am
dupe
it looks like there’s a plateau on prices for the moment.
August 24th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
Ironically there is a wild pig problem in a lot of rural areas. Perhaps they need more harvesting.
August 24th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
I stocked up for making bacon vodka months ago!
August 24th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
In our house, we have eased off on the beef and chicken because of the hormones and antibiotics they feed them. More pork, not so much bacon, ham, or hamhocks, but fresh pork chops, roasts, and tenderloins.
Maybe other people feel like us and it’s driving up the demand.
August 24th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Corn prices go up, hog farmers’ costs go up, production goes down, supply goes down, price goes up.
Yep, economics still works.
Too bad we can’t convince Congress that’s true.
Wait til the ADM subsidy goes up & we have to try and burn 15% ethanol in our cars.
August 24th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Yeah, it’s well to remember a year ago hog producers were losing $30 a head for every hog they shipped to market. Many of them will never recover what they’ve lost over the previous two years of cheap (as in ridiculously poor) prices.
So yes, the price of bacon is going to go up. Mainly because so many producers have been driven out of the market.
As for the price of food going up; you can either decide on an ag policy of cheap food and pay farmers to over-produce and then the government buys all that over-production, stores it (at more expense to the taxpayer) and then pays the farmers to cut back on production when they run out of storage space. This was the policy throughout the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s.
Or you eliminate ag market supports in the hopes we use everything we grow each year AND THAT is going to involve a good bit of the corn crop each year going into ethanol whether we like it or not.
Otherwise the entire ag sector will go through one cycle of economic famine, followed by a short period of profit (for the those with the deep pockets to survive), which in turn is followed by another cycle of economic famine.
Take your pick.
All The Best,
Frank W. James
August 25th, 2010 at 1:01 am
Franks right. Look at the old newsreel footage of the Farmers pouring milk down the drain a year or so before the Crash of ’29. Their Depression hit long before Wall Streets. Just be glad you can still get Bacon, and enjoy it while you can.
August 25th, 2010 at 2:13 am
Frank is right. The producers here wether cattle or hogs have been thined a lot. If they held on to their land, big if, they are now growing for export.
August 25th, 2010 at 3:49 am
Maybe we should start eating more Canadian and British-style bacon. I have read that they are made from different parts of the hog.
August 25th, 2010 at 3:54 am
Oh, and I am sure that I speak for all, here:
A bacon shortage amounts to justifiable grounds for revolution! Politicians! Ropes! Lamp posts!