Egg prices are exploding in the United States as the food supply chain crisis spirals out of control. A new Bloomberg report exposed that food costs are rising uncontrollably all across America, reaching the highest level since May 1979.A few years back, American consumers could actually fill up an entire shopping cart full of food for less than 30 dollars. Now, every time they visit the grocery store, they end up leaving a larger share of their budgets just to purchase the same amount of products.
In the old days, eggs were a fairly inexpensive option, especially for those who couldn’t afford meat and other protein-rich foods. But inflation is wreaking havoc on the breakfast table, with egg prices at grocery stores soaring a whopping 47% in July over last year, according to retail analytics firm Information Resources Inc. One of the main drivers of that stunning price spike is the bird flu epidemic that decimated egg-laying chicken flocks all around the nation in the past year. In fact, ranchers say that this was one of the worst bird flu outbreaks in U.S. history, killing more than 30 million commercial and wild birds. The crisis hurt egg-laying hens and turkeys the most.
Of course, eggs aren’t the only item seeing explosive price increases. Butter saw a 26.3% increase from last year, bread prices climbed 15%, and frozen meals were 23% more expensive, BLS data shows. UN experts warned earlier this month that global food prices are going to be substantially higher in 2023 because food production all over the planet will be way below expectations in the months ahead. If only our paychecks were rising at the same pace as the price of consumer goods, we would be able to handle those increases. But that’s not happening at all. Analysts with ZeroHedge actually pointed out that real average weekly earnings are “now down 16 straight months as inflation eats away at any wage gains.”
In other words, even the highly manipulated figures that official agencies are reporting show that our standard of living has been falling for 16 months in a row. To further complicate matters, industry executives are projecting that energy costs are set to soar all over the western world, and that is certainly going to make things even worse. In the past month alone, the price of natural gas in the U.S. has risen by nearly half, as dry weather conditions spread across the country and millions of Americans turn up their air conditioners in a heatwave. In July, natural-gas futures jumped 48%. Some US electricity utility companies have warned that energy prices are set to become 25% higher in the coming months.
Our leaders had assured us that inflation would just be “transitory”, but here we are with the highest prices in a generation and the lowest purchasing power on record.They keep telling us that next year everything will get better. You can believe that if you want. But the truth is that global food production is currently being hit by one major crisis after the other and, consequently, food prices are likely to continue their upward spiral for the foreseeable future, meaning that the pain has only just begun.
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