FAMILY BUDGET
poverty rates in the country, according to the latest Canadian census.
A focus of the local United Way is targeting local poverty pockets in the downtown, West Windsor and Leamington to help lift households there economically.
The rising cost of food can't help but hamper those efforts and is “one of those sticky problems for which there is no easy solution,” said Fathers.
Of concern, said Fathers, is what happens to food prices post-pandemic. “It's 2022 and things are back to `normal' — do food prices go back down?” he asks.
Not likely, according to Charlebois, who describes the past decade as a Canadian “era of cheap food” compared to other developed countries.
Another reason households are seeing their grocery bills go up, he said, is that the food retail giants where many Canadians shop — like Sobeys and Walmart — are investing huge sums on technology and growing their capacity for online shopping and other e-commerce, where profit margins are bigger.
It's allowing the big retailers to market their products directly to consumers, said Charlebois, but the downside with e-commerce is that “the discounting culture is not transferable online as much.” And someone — namely, the customer — has to pay for those billions in technology upgrades to facilitate more hands-off online shopping.
Dealing with COVID-19 on the farm has been costly and some of those costs will have to be passed along to consumers. Canada's food growers and processors rely heavily on temporary foreign workers and there's been a cost to providing better housing and working conditions for them. And many of those who traditionally come to Canada to help grow our food also didn't make the trip during the pandemic, resulting in less food being grown and harvested.
Even more than the novel coronavirus's impact on food prices, however, this year saw floods, fires, storms and drought hit many parts of North America that grow our foods, all contributing to increased costs down the line for consumers.
Don't blame farmers for higher prices, said Louis Roesch, a Chatham-kent grower who is the local area director at the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.
“It's supply and demand — we do not control the prices in agriculture, that's the market,” said Roesch. And that market is represented by much more than the growers, with just three companies — Loblaws, Sobeys, Metro — controlling half the country's total grocery retail industry.
Those big retailers “have raised their margins a lot — because they can,” said Roesch. Canada's grocery retail industry is increasingly being controlled by “a much, much smaller number of hands — it's a concern of us in agriculture,” he added. Those large grocery retailers have been reporting record revenues during the pandemic.
Before COVID-19, Roesch said most Canadians never asked where their food came from. “That's happening now,” he said, and the silver lining to the pandemic is that consumer interest has grown for “buy local, buy fresh.”
Farm gate sales at Roesch Meats and More — which sells locally raised and grown hogs, chickens, eggs and beans — have doubled since the spring, said Roesch.
A number of new customers at his retail outlet are Canadian consumers currently barred from crossing the border and shopping in Michigan. The downside, he added, is that addressing COVID-19 has led to more regulations, inspections and “red tape” that add costs and frustration of the farm.
“We've been lucky, but it's been tough, too,” he said.
Roesch has his own yardstick to measure how consumers are faring these days.
“I can tell by how eggs sell how things are. When times are tough, our eggs move like crazy,” he said. And that's happening now.
Charlebois, whose lab will be releasing a report in December on projected 2021 food prices, suggests government supports like minimum guaranteed income to help struggling households. Fathers of the United Way also recommends government supports and urges more employers pay their workers a “living wage” (currently pegged at $15.55 per hour for Windsor-essex County).
The local health unit, which advocates for everyone to have access to a nutritious, adequate diet, urges such measures as improved social assistance, more affordable housing and accessible and affordable child care. Chauvin, who rents a townhouse, said she'd like to see rent control to help households such as hers, “and we need more full-time employment.”
“It's a very tough world out there right now,” said Chauvin. Full-time jobs in her line of work are rare, and, while she wouldn't say no to two part-time jobs, she said many employers “tell you when you're working,” which makes it a challenge for employees to juggle multiple jobs. She said she can't live on one part-time job.
“It is what it is — you live with it ... we make it work,” said Gourdine. Of her first and only trip to the food bank, she said: “You swallow your pride and you go.”
A roof over your head and food in your belly — you get enough to exist, but not to live. The cost of everything is going up, up, up.