Note & Comment – cost of food 8/21/07

Have you noticed the price of food? Slowly rising. Statisticians tell us food has risen by 4.4% in a year. Not much, except when you remember what was $ 100.00 last year now is $ 104.40. Still, American households spend just 9.9 cents of every dollar on food, down from 23.4 cents in 1929. In Great Britain households spend 16% of every dollar for food, in Brazil it’s 23%, in Thailand 29%.

Still, why does food cost so much. We spend close to $2.00 for a can of soup while Grandma made a kettle of soup for pennies. How come? She had the ingredients at hand, home grown. Ours comes from distant places, involving many people and much labor.

Take a can for corn, for example. Grown on a Wisconsin farm. [Wisconsin is that wonderful, grand, state somewhere north of here.] Picked by summer help – I was part of such help for several years earning my Seminary funds – processed, canned, labeled, trucked to a warehouse, reshipped to other places near you, and eaten in your dish without giving thought to everything involved to get it there. Your roses for Valentines Day were grown in Peru and brought to you by air freight nearly overnight.

So it costs to eat. So why am I grousing? It’s the “flesh” showing itself. It’s always there. And that why I pray daily “and forgive us our sins’. And the Lord does forgive, fully, graciously, completely, for the sake of the blood shed by His Son, Jesus Christ, for me. And I am thankful God does provide me the funds to buy the needed food daily.

GPD 8/21/07