Food prices Hattie Ellis The high cost of food is making headlines the world over. Find out what factors lie behind the price rises.

In this article

Which foods are affected? Why are food prices rising so much?

Does it help to buy British? What will happen next?

The bigger picture What can consumers do?

Riots in the streets, a pasta strike in Italy, rice rationing in the prosperous US: food stocks are low and prices soaring. In Britain, the cost of a weekly supermarket basket of goods has risen sharply. What's behind the current crisis and what is going to happen next?

Grains, along with meat and dairy products (which are dependent on grains through animal feed), have gone up most. In the past 12 months, between spring 2007 and spring 2008, butter rose by around 60 per cent, milk by 16 per cent, cheese by 25 per cent, beef mince by about 17 per cent, a loaf of bread by 20 per cent and a standard packet of pasta by 80 per cent, according to the mySupermarket website, which tracks the cost of UK supermarket food.

Many reasons lie behind the food price crisis. One underlying factor is demand. The world's population has soared to 6 billion (and is predicted to rise to 9 billion over the next 40 years), which puts pressure on supplies. And as countries such as China and India become more wealthy, people eat more and especially more meat and dairy products. Meat and dairy production depend heavily on grain; it takes eight kilograms of grain to produce a single kilogram of beef.

The soaring cost of oil also plays an important part. Oil prices are continuing their upward spiral and rose by about 400 per cent between 2001 and 2008.

Modern intensive agriculture and food production depend on oil, and not just for transportation. It's part of the cost of refrigeration, manufacturing and fertiliser. And as a result of fears about oil and global warming, there is a push towards growing biofuels, taking land out of production for food plants.

Then there are the ups and downs of harvests; some believe harvests are becoming more unpredictable as a result of global warming. Some think the price rises are partly down to speculation on the commodity markets as capital moves out of property due to the credit crunch.

All of these factors have an impact on UK food prices because we are, increasingly, part of a global food economy. Britain now produces just 60 per cent of the food we eat, compared to 75 per cent in the mid-1990s.

The National Farmers' Union is calling for consumers to buy British and the Government to invest more money in agriculture to ensure our national biosecurity. NFU president Peter Kendall says: "If the Government is serious about playing its part in tackling the world food shortage it should begin by taking active steps to encourage productive farming in Britain."

Others say this is an unrealistic and narrow view of the situation and that in a globalised world you need fair trade and opportunities for developing countries to grow and sell produce.

Are the price rises just a product of  several circumstances coming together at once? Many commentators believe not; that there are long-term pressures on food supplies.

Nobody is sure yet if the rise in prices will slow down or reverse the trend towards higher-quality food. In its favour, organic farming does not use oil-expensive fertiliser, and grass-fed beef is not reliant on increasingly costly grains. Prices of such food should, in theory, rise less in comparison to conventional foods. But it is hard to predict exactly how people will chose to economise as the pennies pinch.

We need to reassess how we buy, sell and eat food, including the way we eat meat

Commentators see the current crisis as an opportunity to address some of the fundamental issues at the heart of the way we produce and buy food. Tim Lang, professor of food policy at London's City University, thinks we need to reassess how we buy, sell and eat food, including the way we eat meat. "There's no simple fix," he says. "We're going to have to think about what's good for the planet and what's good for our bodily health."

Dr Tom Macmillan, director of the Food Ethics Council says: "In the long run, if anything is going to keep prices higher than they have been over the last few decades it is likely to be resource scarcity - water, land and so on - and eating 'green' is about using less and being more careful with resources - and that can go hand in hand with higher animal welfare."

At the same time as prices are going up, we throw away a third of the food we buy, so one part of the solution is to make the food we buy go further. There are also arguments for eating less but better meat, so saving money and encouraging a more economical use of the world's grain supplies.

And, as ever, cooking at home is by far the cheapest way of eating and may well be part of the shift towards thrift as British households tighten their belts.

May 2008