The factors that affect our food supply and ultimately the demand are vast, from droughts, floods, viruses, insects, oil prices, corporate, to governmental cuts to different programs—our food supply is always fluctuating. The supply of apples in Washington will be different then in New York, as well as the cost in winter months versus summer. There is more than just, the sometimes “sticker shock” we expect to suffer when we buy something out of season at a higher price, several market conditions have significant roles in the demand of food. In this paper I will outline how weather, disease, government, corporations, and the price of oil affect the supply and demand for food.
Weather can have implications beyond the extremes of summer or winter. A drought in the Midwest can cause crop prices to rise because the fruits and vegetables that are produced incur increased cost because of their fragile requirements for water, thus causing prices to rise. For example, Canada imports about 80% of all their organic produce, most of it from California, and currently there is a drought that will have adverse effects on what Canadians pay for produce. As it becomes more difficult and costly to harvest organic produce, what produce that is imported will have a higher cost because of the drought causing a slowing of the supply. According to an article from Canadian Television News (CTV) (2014), “Canada imports more than $5 billion worth of produce from California yearly and much of those fruits and vegetables cross the border during the winter months. But as California endures the most severe drought to hit the state in 500 years, strains on water supplies are expected to force farmers to leave fields unplanted, which will create a ripple effect ...
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...he product rose so much that boxes were selling on E-bay for hundreds of dollars. Luckily, since then another company has bought the rights for the brand and is currently producing them.
In conclusion, the supply and demand for food fluctuates considerable responding to several conditions: environmental, political, and economical. In general, the price elasticity for food will always remain constant—the deviations will be for certain products/markets. Moreover markets naturally set themselves at an equilibrium rate determined by supply and demand, when governmental policies and corporations create an economic shortage, this will have a bigger impact on the supply and demand then the above mentioned conditions. While food production is constant, the supply and demand changes dramatically due to the fragile systems that were surrounded by—whether natural or manmade.
this notion of stable supply and demand affected prices of farm commodities. “Low prices on
A counter argument to the conclusion that we should not trust nor buy from our food industries could be the obvious reason that food is cheaper than ever before. When times are hard in America, we can always count on the cheap price of our fast food restaurants and their dollar menus. However, these cheap prices come at a high cost. The reason meat or grains, for example, are so cheap, is due to subsidizing the market. While this may be great for consumers, it is actually incredibly harmful to local farmers. Artificially driving down the prices
A food desert is a location in which a wide variety of nutrition food is not generally available (Wrigley et al. 261). Food deserts exist in places such as inner cities and isolated rural areas (Morton and Blanchard 1). The purpose of the paper supported by this annotated bibliography is to argue that food deserts do not exist because of discrimination against the poor, but because of forces related to supply and demand. This hypothesis ought to be kept in mind when considering each of the sources (Just and Wansink; Wrigley, Warm and Margetts; Jetter and Cassady; Epstein et al.; Schafft, Jensen and Hinrichs; Bitler and Haider) described in the annotated bibliography.
Shifting back to a more locally sourced food economy is often touted as a fairly straightforward way to cut externalities, restore some measure of equity between producers and consumers, and put the food economy on a more sustainable footing.” (source E). The long-distance transportation of food uses a profligate amount of fuel and exploits cheap labor in the process. It can greatly assist the environment to buy from local sources by making the carbon footprint of food production lesser and saving natural resources such as oil.
iv). Significant factors that could cause changes in demand and supply for the low-calorie, microwavable frozen food. Determining the primary manner in which both the long-term and the short-term changes in market conditions could affect the demand for, and the supply, of the
Walsh, Bryan. “America’s Food Crisis.” NEXUS. Eds. Kim and Michael Flachmann. Boston: Pearson, 2012. 166 – 173. Print.
...ny foods have already gone up largely because of the drought. The prices of meat, eggs, fruits, and vegetables and a lot more foods have been shooting up. In 2012 the drought had prices rising which led to it costing the U.S. economy about $30 billion; the only severe weather disaster that has cost more of an impact was Hurricane Sandy.
Stuffed and Starved brings to light the uneven hourglass shape that exists within our world’s food system, and describes what factors contribute to these discrepancies. It begins with the decisions farmers are forced to make on the farm, and ends with the decisions the consumers are able to make at the grocery stores. The purpose of Stuffed and Starved was to describe what factors attribute to the hourglass shape of the food system. Author Raj Patel points out who is profiting and who is suffering in this system, and gives insight as to how the system may be improved.
There are many problems confronting our global food system. One of them is that the food is not distributed fairly or evenly in the world. According “The Last Bite Is The World’s Food System Collapsing?” by Bee Wilson, “we are producing more food—more grain, more meat, more fruits and vegetables—than ever before, more cheaply than ever before” (Wilson, 2008). Here we are, producing more and more affordable food. However, the World Bank recently announced that thirty-three countries are still famine and hungers as the food price are climbing. Wilson stated, “despite the current food crisis, last year’s worldwide grain harvest was colossal, five per cent above the previous year’s” (Wilson, 2008). This statement support that the food is not distributed evenly. The food production actually increased but people are still in hunger and malnutrition. If the food were evenly distributed, this famine problem would’ve been not a problem. Wilson added, “the food economy has created a system in w...
While milk prices dropped, the cost of feeding and caring for cattle did not. According to a March 2009 KSL report, farmers say the demand of crops used for ethanol in the summer of 2008 caused the price of feed to increase, and then the bottom fell out of the milk market. The short storage life of milk makes the dairy industry especially vulnerable to hard economic times. Unlike other commodi...
In the absence of government intervention, price is determined by demand and supply. The equilibrium price is where demand and supply are equal. At this point there are no forces causing the price to change. The quantity which consumers want to buy will equal the quantity which producers want to sell at the current price.
The market price of a good is determined by both the supply and demand for it. In the world today supply and demand is perhaps one of the most fundamental principles that exists for economics and the backbone of a market economy. Supply is represented by how much the market can offer. The quantity supplied refers to the amount of a certain good that producers are willing to supply for a certain demand price. What determines this interconnection is how much of a good or service is supplied to the market or otherwise known as the supply relationship or supply schedule which is graphically represented by the supply curve. In demand the schedule is depicted graphically as the demand curve which represents the amount of goods that buyers are willing and able to purchase at various prices, assuming all other non-price factors remain the same. The demand curve is almost always represented as downwards-sloping, meaning that as price decreases, consumers will buy more of the good. Just as the supply curves reflect marginal cost curves, demand curves can be described as marginal utility curves. The main determinants of individual demand are the price of the good, level of income, personal tastes, the population, government policies, the price of substitute goods, and the price of complementary goods.
The growing world population is demanding more and different kinds of food. Rapid economic growth in many developing countries has pushed up consumers' purchasing power, generated rising demand for food, and shifted food demand away from traditional staples and toward higher-value foods like meat and milk.
...o climate change. All of these have caused an impact on the ability to produce crops and grow agriculturally. Climate change has been increasing the number of droughts, floods, health hazards of employees, natural disasters, and sea level elevations. All of these put in danger the crop productivity resulting in famines and food price increments. Climate change affects agriculture in every country differently due to its location. Countries such as Canada and Russia are being affected positively by climate change since it has enabled the country to prosper agriculturally. Other countries cannot handle drastic temperature changes, such as Sudan and Bangladesh, whose agricultural growth has been affected negatively by the climatic changes. Agriculture is fundamental in a country, creating a balance between agriculture and the increasing climatic changes would be ideal.
When the oil price skyrocketed in 2011, most industries had to bear this price, and the food industry was no exception. The present food sector, including its price is highly transport and fuel dependant. The relationship between fuel and the food industry is systematic and independent. The rise in fuel prices leads to an increase in the price of food. It is important to note that most food-producing firms and farms use machines that hugely depend on fuel to function. They depend on fuel to transport crops and seedlings to farms, to transport food products to the market and to fuel farm equipments. Oil is also used as input in some farm chemicals. When oil price increases, pressure is put on the food system. When the price of oil increases, pressure is put on the entire food production process from production to supply, to the market. The dependency of food production on oil is imminent. In 2011, the food prices reached a new peak in terms of prices. This can hugely be attributed to the rise in oil prices. The food crisis was experienced globally and it led to serious impacts. In developing countries, riots broke out due to the rise of food prices. In these countries, several women and children slept hungry because they lacked finance to purchase food (Organization of the United Nations, 2011).