Climate change boosts food bills

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Last year’s U.S. drought means Canadians will pay more to eat

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Still think climate change is a distant prospect, a problem for your grandchildren, not you?

Maple Leaf Foods, the largest Canadian food processing company, released its 2012 results today. The Globe & Mail reports:

Canadians are about to start paying the price of last summer’s record drought at the checkout counter.

Maple Leaf Foods Inc., maker of Maple Leaf and Schneiders meats as well as Dempster’s bread, warned Tuesday that it will start passing along the higher costs facing its hog and baking operations.

“The effects of food inflation driven by the North American droughts of 2012 will be felt mostly in the first half of 2013,” Maple Leaf president and chief executive Michael McCain said as the company released its results for 2012. …

The drought – the worst in the U.S. Midwest since the 1950s – sent global corn and grain prices soaring last fall. Food price hikes outstripped inflation in 2012, but experts said the worst may be still ahead. …

Greenhouse gases cause hunger. It’s as simple as that.

—–
Ian

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1 Comment

  • Weather disruptions like the severe drought in the mid-west are signs that the damage that humankind is doing to the biosphere is destabilising the climate. There is a dynamic and intricate relationship that exists between the biosphere and the climate with, the biosphere, through continuous evolution, working to create optimal conditions for nurturing life in all its forms. That we are here at all is the result of the conditions created by 3.8 billion years of evolution and we humans in our ignorance and arrogance still to this day choose to turn a blind eye to this fact.