Podcasts about Food prices

The price of gas is coming down, but will we ever see food prices go down? It's unlikely, and there are good reasons for that. Let's discuss, and then Hans Von Spakovsky is here to talk about tariffs.

In this episode of the Leading Voices in Food podcast, host Norbert Wilson is joined by food and nutrition policy economists Will Masters and Parke Wilde from Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition, Science and Policy. The discussion centers around the concept of the least cost diet, a tool used to determine the minimum cost required to maintain a nutritionally adequate diet. The conversation delves into the global computational methods and policies related to least cost diets, the challenges of making these diets culturally relevant, and the implications for food policy in both the US and internationally. You will also hear about the lived experiences of people affected by these diets and the need for more comprehensive research to better reflect reality. Interview Summary I know you both have been working in this space around least cost diets for a while. So, let's really start off by just asking a question about what brought you into this work as researchers. Why study least cost diets? Will, let's start with you. I'm a very curious person and this was a puzzle. So, you know, people want health. They want healthy food. Of course, we spend a lot on healthcare and health services, but do seek health in our food. As a child growing up, you know, companies were marketing food as a source of health. And people who had more money would spend more for premium items that were seen as healthy. And in the 2010s for the first time, we had these quantified definitions of what a healthy diet was as we went from 'nutrients' to 'food groups,' from the original dietary guidelines pyramid to the MyPlate. And then internationally, the very first quantified definitions of healthful diets that would work anywhere in the world. And I was like, oh, wow. Is it actually expensive to eat a healthy diet? And how much does it cost? How does it differ by place location? How does it differ over time, seasons, and years? And I just thought it was a fascinating question. Great, thank you for that. Parke? There's a lot of policy importance on this, but part of the fun also of this particular topic is more than almost any that we work on, it's connected to things that we have to think about in our daily lives. So, as you're preparing and purchasing food for your family and you want it to be a healthy. And you want it to still be, you know, tasty enough to satisfy the kids. And it can't take too long because it has to fit into a busy life. So, this one does feel like it's got a personal connection. Thank you both for that. One of the things I heard is there was an availability of data. There was an opportunity that seems like it didn't exist before. Can you speak a little bit about that? Especially Will because you mentioned that point. Will: Yes. So, we have had food composition data identifying for typical items. A can of beans, or even a pizza. You know, what is the expected, on average quantity of each nutrient. But only recently have we had those on a very large scale for global items. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of distinct items. And we had nutrient requirements, but only nutrient by nutrient, and the definition of a food group where you would want not only the nutrients, but also the phytochemicals, the attributes of food from its food matrix that make a vegetable different from just in a vitamin pill. And those came about in, as I mentioned, in the 2010s. And then there's the computational tools and the price observations that get captured. They've been written down on pads of paper, literally, and brought to a headquarters to compute inflation since the 1930s. But access to those in digitized form, only really in the 2000s and only really in the 2010s were we able to have program routines that would download millions and millions of price observations, match them to food composition data, match that food composition information to a healthy diet criterion, and then compute these least cost diets. Now we've computed millions and millions of these thanks to modern computing and all of that data. Great, Will. And you've already started on this, so let's continue on this point. You were talking about some of the computational methods and data that were available globally. Can you give us a good sense of what does a lease cost diet look like from this global perspective because we're going to talk to Parke about whether it is in the US. But let's talk about it in the broad sense globally. In my case the funding opportunity to pay for the graduate students and collaborators internationally came from the Gates Foundation and the UK International Development Agency, initially for a pilot study in Ghana and Tanzania. And then we were able to get more money to scale that up to Africa and South Asia, and then globally through a project called Food Prices for Nutrition. And what we found, first of all, is that to get agreement on what a healthy diet means, we needed to go to something like the least common denominator. The most basic, basic definition from the commonalities among national governments' dietary guidelines. So, in the US, that's MyPlate, or in the UK it's the Eat Well Guide. And each country's dietary guidelines look a little different, but they have these commonalities. So, we distilled that down to six food groups. There's fruits and vegetables, separately. And then there's animal source foods altogether. And in some countries they would separate out milk, like the United States does. And then all starchy staples together. And in some countries, you would separate out whole grains like the US does. And then all edible oils. And those six food groups, in the quantities needed to provide all the nutrients you would need, plus these attributes of food groups beyond just what's in a vitamin pill, turns out to cost about $4 a day. And if you adjust for inflation and differences in the cost of living, the price of housing and so forth around the world, it's very similar. And if you think about seasonal variation in a very remote area, it might rise by 50% in a really bad situation. And if you think about a very remote location where it's difficult to get food to, it might go up to $5.50, but it stays in that range between roughly speaking $2.50 and $5.00. Meanwhile, incomes are varying from around $1.00 a day, and people who cannot possibly afford those more expensive food groups, to $200 a day in which these least expensive items are trivially small in cost compared to the issues that Parke mentioned. We can also talk about what we actually find as the items, and those vary a lot from place to place for some food groups and are very similar to each other in other food groups. So, for example, the least expensive item in an animal source food category is very often dairy in a rich country. But in a really dry, poor country it's dried fish because refrigeration and transport are very expensive. And then to see where there's commonalities in the vegetable category, boy. Onions, tomatoes, carrots are so inexpensive around the world. We've just gotten those supply chains to make the basic ingredients for a vegetable stew really low cost. But then there's all these other different vegetables that are usually more expensive. So, it's very interesting to look at which are the items that would deliver the healthfulness you need and how much they cost. It's surprisingly little from a rich country perspective, and yet still out of reach for so many in low-income countries. Will, thank you for that. And I want to turn now to looking in the US case because I think there's some important commonalities. Parke, can you describe the least cost diet, how it's used here in the US, and its implications for policy? Absolutely. And full disclosure to your audience, this is work on which we've benefited from Norbert's input and wisdom in a way that's been very valuable as a co-author and as an advisor for the quantitative part of what we were doing. For an article in the journal Food Policy, we use the same type of mathematical model that USDA uses when it sets the Thrifty Food Plan, the TFP. A hypothetical diet that's used as the benchmark for the maximum benefit in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is the nation's most important anti-hunger program. And what USDA does with this model diet is it tries to find a hypothetical bundle of foods and beverages that's not too different from what people ordinarily consume. The idea is it should be a familiar diet, it should be one that's reasonably tasty, that people clearly already accept enough. But it can't be exactly that diet. It has to be different enough at least to meet a cost target and to meet a whole long list of nutrition criteria. Including getting enough of the particular nutrients, things like enough calcium or enough protein, and also, matching food group goals reasonably well. Things like having enough fruits, enough vegetables, enough dairy. When, USDA does that, it finds that it's fairly difficult. It's fairly difficult to meet all those goals at once, at a cost and a cost goal all at the same time. And so, it ends up choosing this hypothetical diet that's almost maybe more different than would feel most comfortable from people's typical average consumption. Thank you, Parke. I'm interested to understand the policy implications of this least cost diet. You suggested something about the Thrifty Food Plan and the maximum benefit levels. Can you tell us a little bit more about the policies that are relevant? Yes, so the Thrifty Food Plan update that USDA does every five years has a much bigger policy importance now than it did a few years ago. I used to tell my students that you shouldn't overstate how much policy importance this update has. It might matter a little bit less than you would think. And the reason was because every time they update the Thrifty Food Plan, they use the cost target that is the inflation adjusted or the real cost of the previous edition. It's a little bit as if nobody wanted to open up the whole can of worms about what should the SNAP benefit be in the first place. But everything changed with the update in 2021. In 2021, researchers at the US Department of Agriculture found that it was not possible at the old cost target to find a diet that met all of the nutrition criteria - at all. Even if you were willing to have a diet that was quite different from people's typical consumption. And so, they ended up increasing the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan in small increments until they found a solution to this mathematical model using data on real world prices and on the nutrition characteristics of these foods. And this led to a 21% increase in the permanent value of the maximum SNAP benefit. Many people didn't notice that increase all that much because the increase came into effect at just about the same time that a temporary boost during the COVID era to SNAP benefits was being taken away. So there had been a temporary boost to how much benefits people got as that was taken away at the end of the start of the COVID pandemic then this permanent increase came in and it kind of softened the blow from that change in benefits at that time. But it now ends up meaning that the SNAP benefit is substantially higher than it would've been without this 2021 increase. And there's a lot of policy attention on this in the current Congress and in the current administration. There's perhaps a skeptical eye on whether this increase was good policy. And so, there are proposals to essentially take away the ability to update the Thrifty Food Plan change the maximum SNAP benefit automatically, as it used to. As you know, Norbert, this is part of all sorts of things going on currently. Like we heard in the news, just last week, about plans to end collecting household food security measurement using a major national survey. And so there will be sort of possibly less information about how these programs are doing and whether a certain SNAP benefit is needed in order to protect people from food insecurity and hunger. Parke, this is really important and I'm grateful that we're able to talk about this today in that SNAP benefit levels are still determined by this mathematical program that's supposed to represent a nutritionally adequate diet that also reflects food preferences. And I don't know how many people really understand or appreciate that. I can say I didn't understand or appreciate it until working more in this project. I think it's critical for our listeners to understand just how important this particular mathematical model is, and what it says about what a nutritionally adequate diet looks like in this country. I know the US is one of the countries that uses a model diet like this to help set policy. Will, I'd like to turn to you to see what ways other nations are using this sort of model diet. How have you seen policy receive information from these model diets? It's been a remarkable thing where those initial computational papers that we were able to publish in first in 2018, '19, '20, and governments asking how could we use this in practice. Parke has laid out how it's used in the US with regard to the benefit level of SNAP. The US Thrifty Food Plan has many constraints in addition to the basic ones for the Healthy Diet Basket that I described. Because clearly that Healthy Diet Basket minimum is not something anyone in America would think is acceptable. Just to have milk and frozen vegetables and low-cost bread, that jar peanut butter and that's it. Like that would be clearly not okay. So, internationally what's happened is that first starting in 2020, and then using the current formula in 2022, the United Nations agencies together with the World Bank have done global monitoring of food and nutrition security using this method. So, the least cost items to meet the Healthy Diet Basket in each country provide this global estimate that about a third of the global population have income available for food after taking account of their non-food needs. That is insufficient to buy this healthy diet. What they're actually eating is just starchy staples, oil, some calories from low-cost sugar and that's it. And very small quantities of the fruits and vegetables. And animal source foods are the expensive ones. So, countries have the opportunity to begin calculating this themselves alongside their normal monitoring of inflation with a consumer price index. The first country to do that was Nigeria. And Nigeria began publishing this in January 2024. And it so happened that the country's national minimum wage for civil servants was up for debate at that time. And this was a newly published statistic that turned out to be enormously important for the civil society advocates and the labor unions who were trying to explain why a higher civil service minimum wage was needed. This is for the people who are serving tea or the drivers and the low wage people in these government service agencies. And able to measure how many household members could you feed a healthy diet with a day's worth of the monthly wage. So social protection in the sense of minimum wage and then used in other countries regarding something like our US SNAP program or something like our US WIC program. And trying to define how big should those benefit levels be. That's been the first use. A second use that's emerging is targeting the supply chains for the low-cost vegetables and animal source foods and asking what from experience elsewhere could be an inexpensive animal source food. What could be the most inexpensive fruits. What could be the most inexpensive vegetables? And that is the type of work that we're doing now with governments with continued funding from the Gates Foundation and the UK International Development Agency. Will, it's fascinating to hear this example from Nigeria where all of the work that you all have been doing sort of shows up in this kind of debate. And it really speaks to the power of the research that we all are trying to do as we try to inform policy. Now, as we discussed the least cost diet, there was something that I heard from both of you. Are these diets that people really want? I'm interested to understand a little bit more about that because this is a really critical space.Will, what do we know about the lived experiences of those affected by least cost diet policy implementation. How are real people affected? It's such an important and interesting question, just out of curiosity, but also for just our human understanding of what life is like for people. And then of course the policy actions that could improve. So, to be clear, we've only had these millions of least cost diets, these benchmark 'access to' at a market near you. These are open markets that might be happening twice a week or sometimes all seven days of the week in a small town, in an African country or a urban bodega type market or a supermarket across Asia, Africa. We've only begun to have these benchmarks against which to compare actual food choice, as I mentioned, since 2022. And then really only since 2024 have been able to investigate this question. We're only beginning to match up these benchmark diets to what people actually choose. But the pattern we're seeing is that in low and lower middle-income countries, people definitely spend their money to go towards that healthy diet basket goal. They don't spend all of their additional money on that. But if you improve affordability throughout the range of country incomes - from the lowest income countries in Africa, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, to middle income countries in Africa, like Ghana, Indonesia, an upper middle-income country - people do spend their money to get more animal source foods, more fruits and vegetables, and to reduce the amount of the low cost starchy staples. They do increase the amount of discretionary, sugary meals. And a lot of what they're eating exits the healthy diet basket because there's too much added sodium, too much added sugar. And so, things that would've been healthy become unhealthy because of processing or in a restaurant setting. So, people do spend their money on that. But they are moving towards a healthy diet. That breaks down somewhere in the upper income and high-income countries where additional spending becomes very little correlated with the Healthy Diet Basket. What happens is people way overshoot the Healthy Diet Basket targets for animal source foods and for edible oils because I don't know if you've ever tried it, but one really delicious thing is fried meat. People love it. And even low middle income people overshoot on that. And that displaces the other elements of a healthy diet. And then there's a lot of upgrading, if you will, within the food group. So, people are spending additional money on nicer vegetables. Nicer fruits. Nicer animal source foods without increasing the total amount of them in addition to having overshot the healthy diet levels of many of those food groups. Which of course takes away from the food you would need from the fruits, the vegetables, and the pulses, nuts and seeds, that almost no one gets as much as is considered healthy, of that pulses, nuts and seeds category. Thank you. And I want to shift this to the US example. So, Parke, can you tell us a bit more about the lived experience of those affected by least cost diet policy? How are real people affected? One of the things I've enjoyed about this project that you and I got to work on, Norbert, in cooperation with other colleagues, is that it had both a quantitative and a qualitative part to it. Now, our colleague Sarah Folta led some of the qualitative interviews, sort of real interviews with people in food pantries in four states around the country. And this was published recently in the Journal of Health Education and Behavior. And we asked people about their goals and about what are the different difficulties or constraints that keep them from achieving those goals. And what came out of that was that people often talk about whether their budget constraints and whether their financial difficulties take away their autonomy to sort of be in charge of their own food choices. And this was something that Sarah emphasized as she sort of helped lead us through a process of digesting what was the key findings from these interviews with people. One of the things I liked about doing this study is that because the quantitative and the qualitative part, each had this characteristic of being about what do people want to achieve. This showed up mathematically in the constrained optimization model, but it also showed up in the conversations with people in the food pantry. And what are the constraints that keep people from achieving it. You know, the mathematical model, these are things like all the nutrition constraints and the cost constraints. And then in the real conversations, it's something that people raise in very plain language about what are all the difficulties they have. Either in satisfying their own nutrition aspirations or satisfying some of the requirements for one person or another in the family. Like if people have special diets that are needed or if they have to be gluten free or any number of things. Having the diets be culturally appropriate. And so, I feel like this is one of those classic things where different disciplines have wisdom to bring to bear on what's really very much a shared topic. What I hear from both of you is that these diets, while they are computationally interesting and they reveal some critical realities of how people eat, they can't cover everything. People want to eat certain types of foods. Certain types of foods are more culturally relevant. And that's really clear talking to you, Will, about just sort of the range of foods that end up showing up in these least cost diets and how you were having to make some adjustments there. Parke, as you talked about the work with Sarah Folta thinking through autonomy and sort of a sense of self. This kind of leads us to a question that I want to open up to both of you. What's missing when we talk about these least cost diet modeling exercises and what are the policy implications of that? What are the gaps in our understanding of these model diets and what needs to happen to make them reflect reality better? Parke? Well, you know, there's many things that people in our research community are working on. And it goes quite, quite far afield. But I'm just thinking of two related to our quantitative research using the Thrifty Food Plan type models. We've been working with Yiwen Zhao and Linlin Fan at Penn State University on how these models would work if you relaxed some of the constraints. If people's back in a financial sense weren't back up against the wall, but instead they had just a little more space. We were considering what if they had incentives that gave them a discount on fruits and vegetables, for example, through the SNAP program? Or what if they had a healthy bundle of foods provided through the emergency food system, through food banks or food pantries. What is the effect directly in terms of those foods? But also, what is the effect in terms of just relaxing their budget constraints. They get to have a little more of the foods that they find more preferred or that they had been going without. But then also, in terms of sort of your question about the more personal. You know, what is people's personal relationships with food? How does this play out on the ground? We're working with the graduate student Angelica Valdez Valderrama here at the Friedman School, thinking about what some of the cultural assumptions and of the food group constraints in some of these models are. If you sort of came from a different immigrant tradition or if you came from another community, what things would be different in, for example, decisions about what's called the Mediterranean diet or what's called the healthy US style dietary pattern. How much difference do this sort of breadth, cultural breadth of dietary patterns you could consider, how much difference does that make in terms of what's the outcome of this type of hypothetical diet? Will: And I think, you know, from the global perspective, one really interesting thing is when we do combine data sets and look across these very different cultural settings, dry land, Sahelian Africa versus countries that are coastal versus sort of forest inland countries versus all across Asia, south Asia to East Asia, all across Latin America. We do see the role of these cultural factors. And we see them playing out in very systematic ways that people come to their cultural norms for very good reasons. And then pivot and switch away to new cultural norms. You know, American fast food, for example, switching from beef primarily to chicken primarily. That sort of thing becomes very visible in a matter of years. So, in terms of things that are frontiers for us, remember this is early days. Getting many more nutritionists, people in other fields, looking at first of all, it's just what is really needed for health. Getting those health requirements improved and understood better is a key priority. Our Healthy Diet Basket comes from the work of a nutritionist named Anna Herforth, who has gone around the world studying these dietary guidelines internationally. We're about to get the Eat Lancet dietary recommendations announced, and it'll be very interesting to see how those evolve. Second thing is much better data on prices and computing these diets for more different settings at different times, different locations. Settings that are inner city United States versus very rural. And then this question of comparing to actual diets. And just trying to understand what people are seeking when they choose foods that are clearly not these benchmark least cost items. The purpose is to ask how far away and why and how are they far away? And particularly to understand to what degree are these attributes of the foods themselves: the convenience of the packaging, the preparation of the item, the taste, the flavor, the cultural significance of it. To what degree are we looking at the result of aspirations that are really shaped by marketing. Are really shaped by the fire hose of persuasion that companies are investing in every day. And very strategically and constantly iterating to the best possible spokesperson, the best possible ad campaign. Combining billboards and radio and television such that you're surrounded by this. And when you drive down the street and when you walk into the supermarket, there is no greater effort on the planet than the effort to sell us a particular brand of food. Food companies are basically marketing companies attached to a manufacturing facility, and they are spending much more than the entire combined budget of the NIH and CDC, et cetera, to persuade us to eat what we ultimately choose. And we really don't know to what degree it's the actual factors in the food itself versus the marketing campaigns and the way they've evolved. You know, if you had a choice between taking the food system and regulating it the way we regulate, say housing or vehicles. If we were to say your supermarket should be like an auto dealership, right? So, anything in the auto dealership is very heavily regulated. Everything from the paint to where the gear shift is to how the windows work. Everything is heavily regulated because the auto industry has worked with National Transportation Safety Board and every single crash investigation, et cetera, has led to the standards that we have now. We didn't get taxes on cars without airbags to make us choose cars with airbags. They're just required. And same is true for housing, right? You can't just build, you know, an extension deck behind your house any way you want. A city inspector will force you to tear it out if you haven't built it to code. So, you know, we could regulate the grocery store like we do that. It's not going to happen politically but compare that option to treating groceries the way we used to treat the legal services or pharmaceuticals. Which is you couldn't advertise them. You could sell them, and people would choose based on the actual merit of the lawyer or the pharmaceutical, right? Which would have the bigger impact. Right? If there was zero food advertising, you just walked into the grocery store and chose what you liked. Or you regulate the grocery store the same way we regulate automotive or building trades. Obviously, they both matter. There's, you know, this problem that you can't see, taste or smell the healthiness of food. You're always acting on belief and not a fact when you choose something that you're seeking health. We don't know to what extent choice is distorted away from a low-cost healthy diet by things people genuinely want and need. Such as taste, convenience, culture, and so forth. Versus things that they've been persuaded to want. And there's obviously some of both. All of these things matter. But I'm hopeful that through these least cost diets, we can identify that low-cost options are there. And you could feed your family a very healthy diet at the Thrifty Food Plan level in the United States, or even lower. It would take time, it would take attention, it would be hard. You can take some shortcuts to make that within your time budget, right? And the planning budget. And we can identify what those look like thanks to these model diets. It's a very exciting area of work, but we still have a lot to do to define carefully what are the constraints. What are the real objectives here. And how to go about helping people, acquire these foods that we now know are there within a short commuting distance. You may need to take the bus, you may need carpool. But that's what people actually do to go grocery shopping. And when they get there, we can help people to choose items that would genuinely meet their needs at lower cost. Bios Will Masters is a Professor in the Friedman School of Nutrition, with a secondary appointment in Tufts University's Department of Economics. He is coauthor of the new textbook on Food Economics: Agriculture, Nutrition and Health (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). Before coming to Tufts in 2010 he was a faculty member in Agricultural Economics at Purdue University (1991-2010), and also at the University of Zimbabwe (1989-90), Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (2000) and Columbia University (2003-04). He is former editor-in-chief of the journal Agricultural Economics (2006-2011), and an elected Fellow of the American Society for Nutrition (FASN) as well as a Fellow of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA). At Tufts his courses on economics of agriculture, food and nutrition were recognized with student-nominated, University-wide teaching awards in 2019 and 2022, and he leads over a million dollars annually in externally funded research including work on the Agriculture, Nutrition and Health Academy (https://www.anh-academy.org), as well as projects supporting government efforts to calculate the cost and affordability of healthy diets worldwide and work with private enterprises on data analytics for food markets in Africa. Parke Wilde (PhD, Cornell) is a food economist and professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Previously, he worked for USDA's Economic Research Service. At Tufts, Parke teaches graduate-level courses in statistics, U.S. food policy, and climate change. His research addresses the economics of U.S. food and nutrition policy, including federal nutrition assistance programs. He was Director of Design for the SNAP Healthy Incentives Pilot (HIP) evaluation. He has been a member of the National Academy of Medicine's Food Forum and is on the scientific and technical advisory committee for Menus of Change, an initiative to advance the health and sustainability of the restaurant industry. He directs the USDA-funded Research Innovation and Development Grants in Economics (RIDGE) Partnership. He received the AAEA Distinguished Quality of Communication Award for his textbook, Food Policy in the United States: An Introduction (Routledge/Earthscan), whose third edition was released in April 2025. 

Markets are starting to settle after weeks of decline. Beef finds its bottom, chicken holds steady, pork pops, and dairy and grains edge higher. The big question — is this the foundation for a rebound, or just a pause before the next dip?BEEF: After weeks of decline, the market has found its floor. Ribeyes, tenderloins, and strips are on the rise again — the question is how fast this rebound will move.POULTRY: Chicken prices have steadied after big drops, with only minor movement expected. But as avian flu cases climb again, how long can this calm last?GRAINS: Talk of a new trade deal with China pushed corn, soy, and wheat higher. If exports pick up, could this be the start of a grain rally?PORK: Bellies spiked $20 to $151, catching the market off guard. Is this a one-week blip or the start of a seasonal climb?DAIRY: Cheese is moving higher, butter finally holding steady. The big question — can demand keep this rally alive with supply still strong?Savalfoods.com | Find us on Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn

Guest Domenic Varricchio, Pluto Commodities, joins to discuss latest announcement from the Trump administration on purchasing meat from Argentina. Is it a concern for American ranchers, or another story of hysteria from the media? Discussion of grain and meat markets, tariff and trade battles, and more.  Guest Scott Walter, author "Arabella", joins to discuss ongoing investigations into dark money operations in the US. Can the Trump admin topple the "deep state" in the US? Discussion of paid protestors, a fixed judicial system, NGOs, and more. 

DFW's Morning News speaks with Franchise Expert, Nick Neonakis about high prices at restaurants. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chicken prices have hit their lowest level in two years, making it the week's biggest story. Beef's slowdown continues, pork holds steady, and dairy drifts lower — but poultry steals the spotlight as the market's best deal.BEEF: Prices are still drifting lower, though the declines are slowing. Middle meats are already ticking back up, hinting that the bottom may be near — but just how long before demand heats things up again?POULTRY: Chicken prices keep sliding, with boneless skinless breasts hitting their lowest point in two years. As demand cools and avian flu flares, the question is: how much longer can this market remain this soft?GRAINS: Harvests are booming and inventories are stacked, leaving corn, soy, and wheat all stuck in neutral. With talk of a biofuel push on the horizon, could soy finally be what shakes this market awake?PORK: Pork is steady, bellies holding at $134 while production rises with cooler weather. Processors may soon start stockpiling for spring, but for now, is this the calm before the climb?DAIRY: Last week's brief rally fizzled, with cheese and butter slipping again. Butter remains a seasonal bargain, but the question is — can this quiet market stay this smooth through the holidays?Savalfoods.com | Find us on Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn

Food prices remain a major concern for consumers across the country – including here in the First State.The typical trip to the grocery store can produce an eye-popping total at the register once everything in your cart is scanned and bagged up.This week, we asked contributor Eileen Dallabrida to take a closer look at those receipts to see where consumers are getting hit hardest – and examine some of the ways people are coping with skyrocketing prices.

What should President Trump do if the peace deal between Israel and Hamas is broken? We open the hour with that conversation before moving on to talk about food prices and new data showing that prices are still high overall.

Chad looks at some new data on grocery prices and we discuss the pain most of us are still feeling each time we ring up our items at the grocery store.

We are all well aware of the costs of our groceries and how much they have increased in recent years. However, the price of milk has fallen over the past few days, and now consumers are wondering: will more products be next?Newstalk Reporter Josh Crosbie has been looking into these reductions and he joins guest host Jonathan Healy to discuss.

People are making tough choices at the supermarket to keep costs down. A new report reveals the average weekly spend per household is now $240 – an increase of only $2 from 2023. To cut costs, 31% of are buying less groceries, 48% are downgrading on brands, and 30% are looking for specials. Head of Sustainable Business Development at Rabobank, Blake Holgate told Mike Hosking the results are unsurprising, as wage inflation has not increased at the same rate as food inflation. He says people have had to make cuts or choices, and that's what they're seeing come through in these results. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kia ora,Welcome to Monday's Economy Watch where we follow the economic events and trends that affect Aotearoa/New Zealand.I'm David Chaston and this is the international edition from Interest.co.nz.And today we lead with news that while much of the financial world seems disconnected from economic reality, we are about to reminded of our local realities this week.This week will be all about the RBNZ OCR review on Wednesday. Will it be a -25 bps cut or a -50 bps cut? Financial markets do not know, but then again neither do analysts. Banks have been assuming -25 bps at least and have trimmed their one year fixed home loan rates by this much. But since the last OCR review one year swap rates have fallen -31 bps, so if there is a -50 bps cut on Wednesday, expect those swap rates to fall almost immediately, and banks to follow that up with more fixed rate mortgage reductions. Savers will be looking on nervously because the rates offered to them in term deposits also face the same downward pressures.In Australia, it will be all about the Westpac consumer confidence survey, the NAB business confidence survey, and consumer inflation expectations. And of course, parts of the eastern states are now on Daylight Saving Time, so basically back to 2 hours behind New Zealand (except Brisbane, which stays 3 hours behind).The US government shutdown will remain the focus this week in the world's major financial markets as the extended impasse between members of Congress showed little signs of improvement. The shutdown jeopardises releases from US Federal agencies including the trade balance, jobless claims, and the budget statement after the September jobs report and other key data has already been delayed. Still, the minutes from the FOMC's last meeting is still expected.Among non-US governmental releases, October's Michigan Consumer Sentiment surveyed will be eyed.Over the weekend the ruling LDP party in Japan selected a new prime minister, notable because it is Japan's first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi. Takaichi, 64, was known to be close to the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, another prominent right-wing leader of the LDP. She has publicly stated that she sees former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as her role model. She has been called a "China hawk". Some locally fear they may be getting a Liz Truss.In China, the massive Mid-Autumn Festival holiday travel is underway. China's railways handled an all-time record 23.1 million passenger trips last Wednesday, the first day of the eight-day holiday.Across the Pacific in the US over the weekend, the ISM released its services PMI for September and that showed a sector no longer expanding. New orders did though, barely, but a sharp slowdown from August's rise. Business activity actually contracted, down near the brief dip in mid-2024, and apart from that its lowest level since the pandemic in 2020. Analysts were not expecting this widely-watched metric to be so downbeat.Price rise impulses were restrained. Businesses are not able to pass on the tariff taxes in full, and that makes them feel quite constrained.In Canada, five provinces raised their minimum wages last week, following five who did it earlier in the year. As a result, British Columbia is now at C$17.85/hr (NZ$21.95), Ontario is at C$17.60/hr. Quebec at C$16.10/hr and Alberta is the lowest at C$15/hr (NZ$18.45).Canadian housing markets are operating on a two-track basis now; rising sales volumes and falling sales prices. In Toronto, sales volumes rose +8.5% in September from a year ago to 5592 homes sold, but average prices fell -4.7% on the same basis. And that was despite a central bank rate cut in the month.More globally, the FAO global food price index fell in September and in part that was due to retreating dairy prices. But they are still +9% higher than year-ago levels. On the other hand, meat prices rose again to be +6.6% higher than year-ago levels. Sheepmeat surged on limited supply and good demand. Beef prices rose sharply to all-time high levels.And we should probably note that after rising to €84/tonne in 2024 to start this year, EU carbon prices then fell to about €60/tonne at the end of March. But since then they have risen back to almost €80/tonne now and putting on a bit of a spurt in early October. While local carbon markets are struggling, the same is not true elsewhere.The UST 10yr yield is now at 4.12% and unchanged from Saturday but down -6 bps for the week.The price of gold will start today at US$3885/oz, up +US$3 from Saturday and a new high. That is up +US$113 or +2.9% from a week ago. Silver had another big spurt this week, now just under US$48/oz, a weekly gain of +3.8%.American oil prices are softish at just under US$61/bbl, but down -US$4 from a week ago, with the international Brent price now just on US$64.5 and down -$5.50 from a week ago.The Kiwi dollar is at just over 58.3 USc, little-changed from Saturday but up +50 bps from a week ago. Against the Aussie we holding at 88.3 AUc. Against the euro we are also unchanged at 49.7 euro cents. That all means our TWI-5 starts today at just under 65.6, up +10 bps from Saturday and up +40 bps for the week.The bitcoin price starts today at US$122,805 and virtually unchanged from this time Saturday. Volatility over the past 24 hours has been modest at just on +/- 1.5%.You can get more news affecting the economy in New Zealand from interest.co.nz.Kia ora. I'm David Chaston. And we will do this again tomorrow.

This week the markets send mixed signals – beef prices slide but middle meats refuse to budge, chicken keeps dropping while avian flu stirs again, and pork bellies dip as loins hold value. Grains stay calm and dairy finally bounces after weeks of decline. Is this the start of real relief, or just the setup for another rally?BEEF: Prices are slipping across most cuts, with chucks, sirloin flap, rounds, and grinds leading the way lower. Even ribeyes and tenderloins paused their climb, though holiday demand will likely push them higher again soon. The big question – will packers tighten harvests to stop the fall, or do we get a few more weeks of relief?POULTRY: Chicken prices keep sliding, with boneless skinless breasts hitting 18-month lows and no clear bottom yet. Production still looks strong, though government reporting is on pause during the shutdown. The real watch – does this drop keep running, or are we about to hit the floor?GRAINS: Harvest is rolling along, and markets aren't budging much. Corn slipped to $4.06 from $4.15 last week, with soy and wheat stuck in the same tight range. With big crops expected, the question is – what's it going to take to shake these markets out of neutral?PORK: Bellies keep sliding, down to $151 from last week's $169 – and that means bacon pricing should ease too. Butts and ribs are inching higher, while loins continue to shine as the best value in pork. The question now – is this just a seasonal dip, or the start of a bigger shift in pork markets? DAIRY: After six straight weeks of declines, the CME finally turned higher. Barrel is up 6, block up 10, and even butter ended its slide with a 6-point gain. The big question – is this the start of a real rally, or just a short bounce before more pressure ahead?Savalfoods.com | Find us on Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn

Clashes between troops and rioters during the Nottingham Cheese Riot led to one man being killed while the mayor himself was knocked down by a rolling cheese ...

Guest host Scott Shantz talks to Stuart Smyth, Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Saskatchewan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The screw worm is closing in on Texas, threatening the nation's largest cattle herd and the beef market with it. Avian flu resurfaces, pork stays steady, and butter keeps sliding – but is beef facing its biggest challenge yet?BEEF: The new screw worm was found less than 70 miles from Texas, potentially impacting the beef industry. Prices are falling for many cuts, but ribeyes and tenderloins stay expensive. The real question – do we have a few more weeks of relief, or are we on the brink of something much bigger?POULTRY: Avian flu has returned, hitting 2.5 million egg layers in Wisconsin, with more turkey cases piling on. Chicken prices are falling, with wings, breasts, and tenders dropping in price. The question now is – will this market reset hold, or will avian flu spoil the party?GRAINS: Argentina tried a quick cash grab by suspending export duties on corn and soy, raking in billions in just two days before reinstating them. Here in the U.S., the markets barely blinked – corn ticked up to $4.15, with soy and wheat holding steady. Will global moves finally shake up these calm grain markets, or are we stuck in steady mode for a while longer?PORK: Bellies nudged up to $169, but don't be fooled – I still see more downside ahead for this market. Loins are steady, ribs are inching higher, and butts are showing some strength. The big question – are we about to see pork finally heat up, or will it stay the quiet value play against beef's chaos?DAIRY: The CME finally showed a flicker of life this week – barrel had its first uptick in a month, block slipped a bit lower, and butter keeps sliding. Is this the true bottom we've been waiting for, or will butter keep melting into the holiday baking season?Savalfoods.com | Find us on Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn

After weeks of rising costs, the markets are finally taking a breather. Beef is still tight, chicken is easing, pork bellies are drifting lower, and dairy might be finding its bottom. It's not a full cooldown, but it feels like the first exhale in a long while.BEEF: Harvest ticked up to 561K head, but most cuts are easing lower – a welcome shift after months of pressure. Middle meats like ribeyes and tenderloins remain stubbornly high, and with the holidays ahead, record pricing could be in play. The real question: how long before consumer pushback forces this market to blink?POULTRY: Production is still running hot – over 7 billion chickens processed this year – but now supply is outpacing demand, pushing prices down across wings, breasts, and tenders. The seasonal dip isn't unusual, but the size of these price drops is worth watching. Meanwhile, avian flu is stirring again with seven new turkey cases, hinting the calm streak may be over.GRAINS: Harvest is just beginning, with corn already 7% in – but prices are holding steady. Corn slipped slightly to $4.11, while soy and wheat stayed flat, with biofuel quotas on the horizon that could shift demand for soy. For now, it's steady fields and steady markets – but will harvest season bring surprises?PORK: Pork remains the best bang for your protein buck as beef prices stay sky-high. Bellies slipped again to $168, with more downside likely in the weeks ahead. Loins are still the standout value, while butts and ribs are just inching up – making this the season to menu pork.DAIRY: Week five of declines has the CME looking softer, but this slide might be about done. Barrel dropped 4, block held steady, and butter tumbled another 15 – the steepest of the bunch. Are we finally at the bottom, or is there one more dip left?Savalfoods.com | Find us on Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn

We have our weekly check-in with Mike Strain, Commissioner of the Louisiana Department of Agriculture & Forestry.

* We get an update on the upcoming weather and how the tropics are looking * Checking in with Ag Commissioner Mike Strain

Caitríona Redmond, Irish Examiner consumer columnist, discusses food price increases and the impact that has on both consumers and farmers.

Food and drink prices are rising at their fastest rate since January last year, whilst the overall headline rate of inflation remains unchanged at 3.8 per cent. Food prices are expected to peak in December as hot weather has led to a poor harvest and higher industry costs. According to ONS figures, the biggest price rises in food and drink include beef and veal, butter, coffee, chocolate and milk. Martin Lines, CEO of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, and an arable farmer in Cambridgeshire, joins us to discuss how the current challenges mean consumers are paying more for everyday essentials. And in part two, The Standard's Chief Theatre Critic, and host of The London Theatre Review podcast, Nick Curtis, joins us to discuss his five star review of The Producers musical at the Garrick Theatre. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you feel as though the price of food has gone through the roof, well, the IFA agrees but says "Consumers in Ireland had little or no food inflation for over 20 years up to 2021". For more on this Tadhg Buckley is the IFA Chief Economist.

Food prices are continuing to rise, with a 5% increase in the year to August. Dairy continues to be the main driver, with the price of milk rising 16%, cheese 26%, and butter 32%. Meat, poultry, and fish followed behind, up 8.1% annually. Fonterra Co-operative Council Chair John Stevenson told Mike Hosking what they see is a pretty clear correlation between current prices and global markets. He says it's a good time to be a farmer now but it may not always be the case, and you only have to go back to the 23/24 season in which the headline milk price was below the cost of production to see that. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kristen and Bob break down the top stories in Reno. This episode is first heard by This Is Reno's paying members, who get this before it is published anywhere else. Get first access and exclusive content by subscribing at https://thisisreno.com/subscribe/Burner trashPost‑Burning Man garbage littering northern Nevada generated a lot of online chatter. It appears the Burn's longstanding “leave‑no‑trace” ethos has morphed into mass dumping of garbage at places like WalMart and Staples. While the event still injects cash into the local economy — airfare, hotels, retail, etc. — some say the financial benefits may be outweighing the environmental fallout.Ribs and tariffsAfter numerous comments bemoaning the prices at the annual rib fest, Kristen did a deep dive into pork market data. She found a near‑20 % jump in St. Louis‑style rib costs over the past year. Trump tariffs on Canadian piglets and feed, and broader supply‑chain pressures that have been nudging food prices upward for several years, account for high rib prices. That's causing some folks to grill in their own backyards instead of getting their samplers from Rasta Joe's.Can parking tickets rescue the city's budget situation?By reconnecting its ticketing system to the DMV, the city of Reno unearthed — think of the bureaucratic equivalent of Raiders of the Lost Ark — thousands of old parking citations, raking in roughly $265,000 in just two months. But at least one  motorist received a city-issued parking ticket dating back to 2021 for a car he had sold the year prior. The situation was further muddied by a recent state‑wide cyber‑attack, including on the DMV, which delayed processing. Alas, the city is so far in the hole, because of lack of tax revenue and dramatically increased costs in recent years, particularly on employee salaries, that the cash infusion is only a drop in the bucket.The ‘state of the county' was propagandaWashoe County's “State of the County” meeting resembled a glossy PR reel more than a substantive overview of what's going on at the county. Critics noted glaring omissions: no discussion of the CARES campus, homelessness initiatives, crime statistics or upcoming fire‑service consolidations. About that fire stationMeanwhile, residents of west Washoe Valley have a fire‑station deficit. Building a new station could cost upwards of $17 million — a sum the financially strapped Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District can't secure, despite attempts at state and federal grants. Lastly, congrats to Ed Pearce with KOLO TV for his lifetime achievement award.Support the show

Poultry leads the move lower as chicken prices ease, but across the board, the markets are full of mixed signals. Beef stays strong, dairy keeps sliding, and pork and grains add their own twists.BEEF: Demand is cooling a touch with grinds, briskets, and flanks easing back, but ribeyes and tenderloins are still charging higher. Supplies remain too tight for a true correction, so any relief looks more like a pause than a pullback. Heading into the holidays, the pain point for consumers hasn't hit yet – and we may not be close.POULTRY: Avian flu is back in the headlines – six new cases this week, hitting nearly 300K turkeys, stirred up by cooler weather and migration. On the chicken side, it's all good news: supply is finally ahead of demand, bringing prices down across the board. The question is, how long will the balance last?GRAINS: Markets are holding steady with corn at $4.17, soy flat, and wheat unchanged. All eyes are on the USDA report out Friday – if crop yield estimates are trimmed, we could finally see a push higher. Until then, it's calm in the grain bin.PORK: Bellies finally slipped, closing at $172 – down $10 from last week – and should keep easing over the next few weeks. But with cold storage stocks very low, don't expect a major falloff. Meanwhile, butts and ribs are ticking higher, loins are steady, and pork still delivers solid value on the plate.DAIRY: It's week four of declines at the CME – barrel down 8, block off 7, and butter slipping another 3. The slide keeps rolling, and while it's unclear how long it will last, for now we'll take the ride. Savalfoods.com | Find us on Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn

Jason Bottenfield and Phil Kafarakis discuss the latest on inflation. Jason calls this week's PPI report “a gift” for the Fed, giving them more leeway to cut rates as they worry about the job market. He thinks a cut this month will only be 25-basis-points, but expects two cuts this year as the Fed enters an “easing cycle.” Phil zeroes in on rising food prices, citing climate change, diseases, and tariffs “complicating” the picture.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day. Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/ About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

BUSINESS: Philippine inflation up in August due to higher food prices but stays within target | Sept. 6, 2025Subscribe to The Manila Times Channel - https://tmt.ph/YTSubscribe Visit our website at https://www.manilatimes.net Follow us: Facebook - https://tmt.ph/facebook Instagram - https://tmt.ph/instagram Twitter - https://tmt.ph/twitter DailyMotion - https://tmt.ph/dailymotion Subscribe to our Digital Edition - https://tmt.ph/digital Check out our Podcasts: Spotify - https://tmt.ph/spotify Apple Podcasts - https://tmt.ph/applepodcasts Amazon Music - https://tmt.ph/amazonmusic Deezer: https://tmt.ph/deezer Stitcher: https://tmt.ph/stitcherTune In: https://tmt.ph/tunein #TheManilaTimes#KeepUpWithTheTimes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summer's still sizzling in the beef market, but other proteins and dairy are slipping. From ribeye highs to butter slides, it's a week of high steaks and low falls across the board.BEEF: Signs point to the market finally cooling as we move through September – but it may be short-lived. Ribeyes, tenderloins, chucks, rounds, and grinds are still climbing, though thin meats like skirts and briskets are starting to slip. With herds small and Mexico still closed, high prices aren't going anywhere soon… moderation may be coming, but not just yet.POULTRY: Production stays strong – up about 1% – but prices are sliding for the second week straight. Wings, breasts, and tenders are all moving lower, making chicken a solid feature right now. Still, with one new avian flu case reported and cooler weather coming, could we see trouble ahead?GRAINS: Corn nudged back over $4 for the first time in three weeks as export demand looks solid and crop estimates soften a bit from “best ever” to “some issues.” Soy keeps trying to rally but can't quite get there, while wheat remains the bargain buy of the bunch.PORK: Bellies are stuck in the $180–$185 range, closing at $182 – but the next move looks lower, so it's not the time to load up. Butts and ribs are bouncing back after recent declines, while loins continue to be the standout value cut.DAIRY: Week three of a sliding CME – barrel down 1, block down 3, and butter off another 11 after last week's steep drop. It's not a massive slide, but the steady decline is adding up – will the dip deepen, or start to level out?Savalfoods.com | Find us on Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn

Eoin Cluskey, Head Baker & Owner of Bread 41 and Michael Vaughan Vaughan Lodge Hotel, Lahinch in Clare

Professional sports bettor and advantage gambler Bill "Krackman" Krackomberger joins Jon Orlando to talk gambling, what's happening in Las Vegas and plenty more!Time stamps0:00 - 3:42 Poker3:43 - 7:12 Money in the Casino 7:13 - 11:09 Draftkings New House Rule11:10 - 12:05 Food Prices 12:06 - 14:04 Is Vegas Dead?14:05 - 14:49 Sphere 14:50 - 17:17 Powerball 17:18 - 18:37 Dana White 18:38 - 24:45 Casino Lawsuit24:46 - 26:07 Desert Discovery 26:08 - 28:52 Casino Scheme 28:53 - 29:50 Venmo29:51 - 37:03 Slots & Parlays

Hour 1 of BMitch & Finlay features the guys reacting to week one of college football and a look at the Commanders food prices.

Preview: Lancaster County. Colleague Jim McTague comments on the local facts of the county that do not stem the young consumers from complaining about food prices. More later. 1945 Lancaster County

Summer's wrapping up, but the markets are still making waves. Pork bellies take a dive, beef keeps the heat on, and chicken cools just in time for football season. From butter drops to grain gluts, it's a late-summer belly flop across the board.BEEF: Prices keep climbing as production stays tight – 547K head harvested this week and even fewer expected with the holiday ahead. Chucks, grinds, ribeyes, and tenderloins are leading the charge, while strips are still the relative value. The market may cool off soon, but not yet – buy now, waiting will cost you money.POULTRY: Chicken prices finally cooled off for Labor Day – wings, breasts, and tenders are all down. Production is still running strong, about 1% ahead of last year, so we'll take the win and enjoy cheaper chicken for now. One small avian flu case popped up, but nothing major.GRAINS: Another rally fizzled – corn harvest is pegged at a massive 16.7 billion bushels, keeping prices in check. Corn nudged up slightly to $3.94, while soy and wheat stayed flat. With crops this strong, the market's still waiting for a spark to push things higher.PORK: Bellies slipped again, closing at $181 with more downside likely ahead. Butts and loins are steady, ribs are edging up, and overall production is running about 2% lower year-to-date. With nothing pushing demand higher, this market looks set to stay quiet for the next few weeks.DAIRY: CME gave back August's gains – barrel down 2, block down 3, and butter dropping a sharp 14. After weeks of climbing, this market is sliding fast… will the downturn stick?Savalfoods.com | Find us on Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn

Sorry for the delay, we were on vacation on Friday. Market Updates for last week below!BEEF: Prices keep climbing across the board – ribeyes, tenderloins, chucks, and rounds are all on fire. With packers still losing money, production dropping, and the Southern border closed to live animal imports, pressure is building. Relief may come after Labor Day – but will it be too little, too late?POULTRY: Chicken stays strong with production up and demand steady – wings are flat for now while breasts and tenders ease a bit. Football season could give wings a lift, but the real watch is Avian Flu: after six clean weeks, a new case breaks the streak. Will cooler weather bring more trouble?GRAINS: Harvest is underway and while yields look good, they're not record-shattering just yet. Corn is holding under $4 for a third straight week, soy is showing some strength on export demand, and wheat is slipping. The market looks steady – but will exports or tariffs be the wild card?PORK: Bellies look like they've peaked, slipping back to $182 from last week's $194 – and likely heading lower into fall. With butts and loins down and ribs steady, pork remains one of the best buys on the menu. But is this the break buyers have been waiting for, or just a seasonal pause?DAIRY: After a couple of big weeks higher, the market eased back – barrel down 1½, block steady, and butter slipping just ½. The push has cooled for now, but will those gains start to melt further in the weeks ahead?Savalfoods.com | Find us on Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn

* Grocery prices remain high, and there are concerns tariffs could rattle supply chains even more * We recap President Trump's meetings with Putin and then Zelensky and other European leaders

* Clancy Dubos on Mayor Cantrell only having herself to blame * Is there a leader in the Saints QB race? * Mayor Cantrell's rise to fame and fall from grace * States are cracking down on kratom. What does the science say about it? * Grocery prices remain high...and tariffs could make them worse * Deepfakes of doctors are becoming more common, harming people

Grocery prices remain high, and there are concerns tariffs could rattle supply chains even more. We'll break down what's going on with Patrick Penfield, Professor of Supply Chain Practice at Syracuse University.

The price of food has increased five percent over the past 12 months, the latest figures released by Stats NZ show, leaving families struggling to put basics on the table. Westpac economist Satish Ranchhod spoke to Corin Dann.

In this episode of the Ag Tribes Report, host Vance Crowe is joined by Jim Smith, a swine nutritionist and farmer from Northeast Indiana, to discuss the latest developments in agriculture. The conversation kicks off with a deep dive into the recent crop and WASDE reports, highlighting the challenges farmers face with plummeting corn prices despite surging global food prices. The discussion expands to cover the EPA's new diesel exhaust fluid rules, which aim to ease equipment shutdowns and save family farms significant costs. The episode also touches on the historic drop in US alcohol consumption and its impact on barley, hops, and grape growers, as well as the Potter Valley water crisis affecting California farmers.Vance and Jim explore the complexities of the current agricultural landscape, including the paradox of high global food prices and low crop prices, and the implications of new environmental regulations. They also delve into broader economic and cultural shifts, such as the decline in alcohol consumption and the rise of nonalcoholic alternatives. The episode concludes with a discussion on the value of Bitcoin in relation to farmland prices, offering listeners a comprehensive overview of the multifaceted issues facing the agriculture industry today.Legacy Interviews - A service that records individuals and couples telling their life stories so that future generations can know their family history. https://www.legacyinterviews.com/experienceRiver.com - Invest in Bitcoin with Confidence https://river.com/signup?r=OAB5SKTP

BEEF: The summer beef rally isn't slowing down – low production and high demand are keeping prices on the move. Middle meats, chucks, rounds, and grinds are all climbing, setting us up for a pricey Labor Day BBQ. Will the market cool after the holiday, or will tight cattle supplies keep the heat on?POULTRY: Production is running 1% ahead of last year, with demand staying strong as chicken remains the go-to alternative to high beef prices. Wings are steady for now, but will football season send them higher? Six weeks with no new Avian Flu cases – let's keep it going.GRAINS: Corn prices remain under $4 with a record U.S. harvest on the horizon – great for feeders, rough for farmers. But with soy inching up on palm oil tariffs and wheat holding steady, could this calm market be setting the stage for a surprise turn?PORK: Bellies cracked the $200 mark before slipping back – still riding high for now. But with just a few more weeks of seasonal strength left, will the fall bring the big break buyers have been waiting for?DAIRY: Cheese keeps climbing – barrel up 6, block up 4 – but butter's the rebel, dropping 11 points. With baking season buying about to kick off, is the clock ticking on those lower butter prices?Savalfoods.com | Find us on Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn

Summary: This episode of Restaurant Owners Uncorked features Molly Engelhart, a former Los Angeles vegan chef turned Texas cattle rancher and author of “Debunked by Nature: How a Vegan-Chef-Turned-Regenerative-Farmer Discovered that Mother Nature Is a Conservative.” Molly shares her journey from operating five vegan restaurants to running a regenerative cattle ranch and on-farm restaurant. Her shift came after realizing that all food production, vegan or otherwise, involves death, and that avoiding animal products doesn't necessarily equate to environmental or moral purity. She describes the hidden realities of agriculture, the economic challenges farmers face, and the systemic issues in U.S. food production. Molly emphasizes the need for fair pricing for farmers, consumer education, and direct engagement with nature. She also discusses her upcoming Food is Medicine conference, aimed at connecting chefs, farmers, and consumers with regenerative agriculture and holistic health practices.Key Takeaways: Identity Shift: Molly moved from being a lifelong vegan and chef to a regenerative cattle rancher after realizing vegan agriculture still depends on animal byproducts and causes animal deaths. Food Waste Catalyst: Concerns over massive restaurant food waste led her to start a farm, sparking revelations about the true nature of food production. “Death on Every Plate” Reality: Whether eating broccoli or steak, agriculture involves death, via fertilizers, pest control, or mechanical harvesting. Economic Pressures on Farmers: Land, feed, taxes, and equipment costs make it nearly impossible for new ranchers to survive financially without inherited land or side income. Food Prices & Farmer Survival: Many commodity crop prices haven't risen since the 1970s, while input costs have skyrocketed, contributing to the loss of 140,000 farms in the past decade. Health & Nutrition Concerns: She links modern diseases to refined flour, sugar, and agrochemicals, advocating for nutrient-dense, whole foods despite their higher cost. Chefs as Cultural Influencers: Restaurants can shift consumer perceptions by showcasing local, regenerative foods and promoting direct farmer relationships. Food Sovereignty as National Security: The U.S. has become a net importer of food, narrowing crop diversity and risking resilience. Systemic Change Needed: Calls for reduced bureaucracy, innovative housing for farm workers, and banking products to help small farmers acquire land. Upcoming Event: Molly is hosting the Food is Medicine conference (Sept 26–28) featuring workshops, advocacy training, and speakers like Will Harris, focusing on regenerative food and health transformation.

BEEF: Prices are surging in the dead of summer – and it's not slowing down. With record-high cattle costs and packers losing $300 a head, the market's acting more like spring than August… so what's driving this upside?POULTRY: Chicken stays steady – strong production, strong demand, and no big price moves on the horizon. With five weeks flu-free and beef heating up, is poultry about to hold its ground or ride the market wave?GRAINS: Grains keep sliding – with corn dipping under $4 a bushel for the first time in a long while. Soy and wheat are following suit, but could strong soy meal exports shake things up?PORK: Pork bellies bounce back to $189 – and the strength may hold through month's end. But with loins, butts, and ribs slipping, how long will the split market last?DAIRY: The CME heats up – barrel jumps 11, block climbs 12, and butter bucks the trend, sliding 4.Savalfoods.com | Find us on Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn

Inflation in food is way beyond the rest of the things we buy. Why, PJ asks Charlie Weston the Irish Independent Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Grocery prices will continue to hit Kiwi consumers and our economy hard. A report by the Commerce Commission shows prices are increasing again this year after appearing to stabilise last year. It's revealed we now pay the fifth highest grocery prices in the developed world. Grocery Action Group Chair Sue Chetwin told Mike Hosking the competition in New Zealand isn't particularly healthy. She says that unless the two major supermarkets know that they're going to face proper regulation or something big will happen to them, they can continue to charge high prices. LISTEN ABOVE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Oliver Browne, Accounting Lecturer in University College Cork and consumer commentator, discusses rising food prices

BEEF: The market's still sliding, but not as fast as you'd think with production this tight. Ribeyes and tenderloins? We may have already hit the year's low – so is an expensive holiday season inevitable? Thin meats are dropping, grinds dipped too, but this market's playing a long game.POULTRY: Chicken production is holding strong – wings are steady, breasts are ticking up, and tenders dipped a bit. Demand isn't going anywhere, but will prices stay calm? Plus, we're a month Avian flu-free – can we keep the streak alive?GRAINS: Strong crops, weak exports, and tariff concerns are pushing corn, soy, and wheat lower. Prices are slipping – but is this a true bargain, or just the calm before another shakeup?PORK: The pork market's moving lower – and even bellies are along for the ride. Is this a one-week blip or the start of an early slide? We'll need another week to see where this goes.DAIRY: After weeks of slipping, butter's starting to climb again – but is it just a pause or a new trend? This week's calm might be the quiet before the next churn.Savalfoods.com | Find us on Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn

David Murphy, Economics and Public Affairs Editor, reports that food prices are estimated to have risen by 4.6% over the last 12 months, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office.

BEEF: The summer slide continues. Ribeyes and strips are dragging the market down, and briskets and grinds are finally dipping – but don't let your guard down just yet. With production still sluggish, we've likely got a few more weeks of softness before fall starts cooking up something new.POULTRY: Demand is driving this market – wings, breasts, and tenders are all on the rise. With summer heat slowing growth and no sign of appetite cooling off, prices could keep climbing. Three Avian Flu-free weeks in a row? Let's hope the streak sticks.GRAINS: Crops look great and prices are steady – for now. With new tariffs on deck and shifting global demand, especially for soy, the calm could break. Keep your eyes peeled… August might shake things up.PORK: Bellies keep climbing – $200 is in sight – while everything else takes a breather. Butts and loins are easing down, making loins a standout value. If you're planning menus, now's the time to think pork.DAIRY: Things are calm in cheese country – just a slight move in block and barrel this week. Butter's taking the stairs down again, and it's not done dropping yet. Could be more room to melt.Savalfoods.com | Find us on Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn

with Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen

Our reporter Florence Okojie has been asking shoppers in Stillorgan and Sandymount about food prices