Food prices to surge in 2020
Report forecasts typical family will spend almost $500 more on groceries in the coming year
HALIFAX— Prepare to fork over more cash for meat, seafood, fruits and veggies in 2020 as a new report forecasts that a typical family will spend almost $500 more on groceries in the coming year.
Released Wednesday, Canada’s Food Price Report for 2020, a collaboration between Dalhousie University and the University of Guelph, forecasts that overall food prices will increase by two to four per cent, with the average family paying $487 per year more on their annual grocery bill when compared with 2019 figures. That represents a total annual household food expenditure of $12,667 for 2020.
“Our model’s accuracy rate is about 82 per cent over the 10 years we’ve done the report. But every time we’ve missed the mark, we actually lowballed an increase, so what you’re seeing in the report is probably the actual minimum,” explained Dalhousie University professor Sylvain Charlebois, the report’s lead author.
“Close to $500 more for a family of four per year is quite a lot compared to past years … We are definitely expecting a harder year for families when it comes to food affordability.”
Meat lovers, get ready to sink your teeth into some disappointing news. The food report forecasts that Canadians will be paying four to six per cent more for that particular commodity in 2020. This is despite the rising popularity of “fake meat,” plant-based protein alternatives that flooded the marketplace and nabbed headlines over the past year.
“There’s a bit of a paradox because most people may think demand for meat is dwindling and therefore prices will drop. Uh uh. That’s not what we’re saying,” Charlebois said. “We actually do believe that demand elasticity will remain strong. In other words, people
will pay whatever price regardless because they want that piece of meat,” Charlebois said.
Charlebois said another factor likely to impact meat prices in 2020 is a predicted escalation in the price of pork.
“We are expecting 2020 to be a nerve-racking year for the hog industry given what’s happening with the Asian swine flu,” he said. “It can actually hit Canada at any given time, and stocks are already low, so we’ve seen prices increasing already this year and that will continue into 2020.”
The report notes that in the coming year, “the elephant in the room” is climate change and its impact on our food systems. It points to changing weather patterns that bring droughts, forest fires, heavy precipitation, reduced freshwater access and rising sea levels.
“I think fundamentally the problem we have in Canada is that from November until May the ground is frozen, and we have to import vast amounts of food that we need to sustain ourselves,” University of Guelph professor Simon Somogyi explained in an interview.
“With climate change we’re going to have far more fluctuating temperatures, droughts, rain, winters, annual pests and disease.
“Because we have to import so many things, we’re at the mercy of events impacting us being able to get supplies of food into our country.”
Somogyi, the food report’s project lead for University of Guelph, said one of the things that most surprised him when examining the modelling for their 2020 food forecast was that vegetable prices are expected to increase by two to four per cent. Although their 2019 food report had anticipated a four to six per cent increase in the cost of vegetables, the reality was that last year consumers faced a whopping12 per cent increase in the price of veggies.
“Now we’re predicting another up to four per cent increase, so this is potentially a 16 per cent increase in the price of vegetables in what would be less than two years,” Somogyi said.
Other watchlist items outlined in Canada’s Food Price Report for 2020 include an expected one to three per cent increase for dairy products, a bump of 1.5 to 3.5 per cent more for fruit and a two to four per cent increase for seafood. Bakery products were expected to increase by zero to two per cent.