Posted on 10/09/2021 2:24:22 PM PDT by blam
Americans are accustomed to a bowl of cereal as their go-to breakfast meal is about to experience a price increase because of rapid food inflation.
This year, a devastating drought in North American oat fields has resulted in the lowest harvest for the cereal grain in years, pushing prices to record highs, a warning sign that breakfast inflation is imminent.
Scorching heat waves in Candian oat fields slashed production to an 11-year low. Canada, the world’s biggest exporter, ships most of its oats to the US, its largest consumer.
The result so far has been a new record high in oats futures trading on the CME. The sudden spike in prices has yet to ripple through supply chains to affect consumers, though that will be coming.
According to Bloomberg, “the situation for North American farmers was so dire in the summer that many cut their losses and harvested damaged plants to be sold as feed for animals.”
What this means for consumers is that dwindling supplies and record-high prices will soon affect foods like cereals, oatmeal, and granola bars, all popular breakfast items.
Randy Strychar, president of Ag Commodity Research and Oatinformation.com, said Cheerios, the US’ most popular cereal, is made entirely of oats. He said there’s no substitute for the ingredient: “You can’t make a Cheerio out of barley.”
General Mills, the maker of Cheerios and Nature Valley granola bars, nor Quaker Oats Company, the maker of oatmeal, among others, have yet to announce price increase of their oat products, but that could be imminent or at least create an illusion of stable prices through shrinkflation.
As for Oatly Group AB, the world’s largest oat milk company, they’re able to source in the Baltics and other countries in addition to Canada to mitigate soaring prices. As for smaller North-American oat-milk producers, they could be forced to raise prices.
Another popular breakfast food facing higher prices is sugary donuts, according to Krispy Kreme, Inc., who recently warned ingredients, such as flour, butter, milk, oil, and sugar, are forcing the company to raise prices.
Global food prices rose to a new decade high last month, according to a United Nations index.
Breakfast foods might soon be the latest causality of soaring food inflation impacting the working poor the hardest.
the Fred Meyer brand of cheerios is just as good and half the cost....
Riots will start after noon due to lack of coffee.
Must be hard to find rooster eggs.
Thank you Biden. /s
The box costs more than the product
Gonna take some grit to through these next few years or yer gonna need polenta prayer...
I just raised my price per pound 14% and rationalized all brands at 18.95 per lb.
That is for our services to businesses and we supply the brewers...
bookmark
Bantam rooster eggs too.
—
Great. Transgender chickens.
Oats are for horses, not people. They could kill you!
/s
Beer will be affected.
New England IPAs hardest hit
That little 28oz can of steel cut oats was $6.00 the other day.
More likely siesta will start after noon without coffee. 🥱😴
As long as it doesn’t affect my Grape Nuts or my wife’s grits, we’re good......
I didn’t notice that oats were any more expensive at Sam’s yesterday.
But that’s a good thing, so far.
Ping.
Couldn’t see that one coming, could we with the drought this summer?
The times we're living in includes
- maybe the greatest and bloodiest mass infanticide in history led by The Untied States.
- over the last 100 years literally hundreds of millions of citizens were killed by their own corrupt totalitarian governments of Germany, USSR, and Communist China.
My Quaker Oats used to come 10 packets to a box. A few months ago boxes started coming with only eight packets.
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