Bread $1 a Loaf? Yes, Says Chicoan

“Man doth not live by bread alone.”

“Bread is the staff of life.”

“Bread: Economic security and social justice for all.”

To these famous quotations on bread last week was added another: “Bread: $1 a loaf by the end of 1974.”

So said the American Baking Association, declaring that last year's wheat deal with the Soviet Union had so depleted this country's domestic supplies of grain that bakers across the country are experiencing fantastic price raises in their ingredients.

The outcome of all this, they warned, will be a dramatic increase in the cost of bread — to $1 a loaf for plain, old white by the end of the year.

Last Wednesday, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz labeled that forecast by the nation's backers “hogwash.” Is it?

According to Fred Page, manager of Rainbo Baking Co. plant at 418 Ivy St., the cost of flour to his company's operation here has increased 125 per cent in the last year. Shortening has gone up 119 per cent, with sugar and other ingredients increasing about 50 per cent, he said.

Page, just back from Texas, home of the Campbell-Taggart Crop., parent company of Rainbo bread, was notified Friday of yet another increase in yeast prices, which he said would amount to about 20-25 per cent. …

The price increase in the final quarter of 1973 was the first price increase the baking industry had been allowed since federal price controls went into effect, Page said. Up until then, bakeries had been absorbing the increased costs of making their product, and, Page claims, “taking a bath.” …

On the subject of the $1 a loaf prediction, Page said that although Rainbo admittedly has something of a vested interest in the American Baking Association … his company does agree with it.

Page noted that businesses must “look down the road” and make plans for the future. …

Perhaps housewives would do well to do some advanced planning also … planning on spending more on bread in the future.

— Enterprise-Record, Jan. 19, 1974