An Interesting Prespective.............

This is an editorial from The Sunday Paper. I think it hits thing right on the head. As I was reading this. I thought. Is this really true. On some thing. But try to buy an avocado In winter up here and see the 3.00 dollar EACH price tag. Bieng this remote is amazing. But there is always a price.People need to see the need to reduce there global footprint. Please especially pay attention to what I highlighted in the editorial.- Love The Big J Kahuna

News-Miner Editorial
Price increases a relief?
Compared with oil’s rise, food is still relatively cheap

Published Sunday, August 31, 2008


Given the degree to which our economy depends upon phenomenally expensive petroleum, recent news articles about modest food price increases actually seem like good news.

The production and distribution of our modern American diet is so entwined with the need for oil and gas that it is easy to imagine food prices rising in close concert with petroleum. A barrel of oil this month is more than 10 times as expensive as it was a decade ago.

During that decade, a week’s worth of basic nutritious food for a family of four in Fairbanks has risen from almost exactly $100 to $126.

That’s a 26 percent increase. The difference in the price of a barrel of oil is more than 1,000 percent. No one wants to ponder what would happen here if food prices went up by even a fraction of the rise we’ve seen in oil.

But oil is used to carry so much of that food — from places all across the earth to our dinner tables — that it seems logical and unavoidable that such a fractional increase will occur at some point unless petroleum prices drop significantly. The links between our plates and petroleum are even deeper than the transportation system. Many pesticides and herbicides require petrochemical base ingredients derived from oil. Modern farm equipment can’t move without oil. Natural gas, which hasn’t gone as crazy as oil in terms of price, provides the basic feedstock for much of the nation’s agricultural fertilizer.

In fact, economists are expecting this link to start showing up more in food prices. Federal forecasters say prices will rise 5-6 percent this year and another 4-5 percent next year.

That’s a far cry from 1,000 percent, fortunately, but it seems a safe bet to assume greater impacts are coming.

Decades ago, before the creation of modern, efficient transportation systems, Alaskans paid a premium for food carried from the Lower 48. As recently as the 1960s and ’70s, that meant many of us went without fresh meat, fresh milk, fresh eggs, fresh fruit. Unless it was dried or canned, it didn’t make the shopping list if it had to come from Outside.

At the same time, we were more self-sufficient. Gardens were not just for aesthetics — they were essential for healthy living. People hunted and fished more. Small farms surrounded Fairbanks.

In the past 50 years, our expectations and lifestyles changed greatly. Today, Fairbanks, on the far northern end of the nation’s roads, rails and barges, has more products available for prices quite similar to the Lower 48. As life here has changed, we have barely seemed to pay for the differences on a relative scale. We soon may see that change, absent any shift in worldwide petroleum prices.