Canadian families will pay a lot more for their foods in 2020, due to rising produce, meat, and seafood prices, a new report said. Meanwhile, a separate report found that Americans’ per capita availability of red meat, poultry, and seafood is on the rise.
Canadians should expect to pay CAD 487 (USD 370, EUR 333) more on food this year – or an average of CAD 12,667 (USD 9,622, EUR 8,667) per household, the 2020 Canada's Food Price Report found.
Analysts at the University of Guelph's Arrell Food Institute and Dalhousie University's Agri-Food Analytics Lab, which published the report, expect price hikes of between 2 percent and 4 percent on seafood sold in Canada.
Red meat prices could rise as much as 6 percent, while vegetable prices could rise as much as 4 percent and fruit prices could go up by 3.5 percent.
"If U.S. President Donald Trump's election campaign focuses heavily on Mexico border protection, this may result in even more costly fruit and vegetables for Canadians," the University of Guelph Professor Simon Somogyi, project lead for the report, said in a press release. "We get a large amount of our fruit and vegetables from the U.S. and Mexico and delays at the border crossing can lead to empty grocery store shelves.”
Meanwhile, Americans’ per-capita supply of red meat, poultry, and fish/shellfish rose from 133.5 pounds in 2014 to 143.9 pounds in 2017, the United States Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service found.
Red meat (beef, pork, veal, and lamb) accounted for 51 percent the total, followed by poultry at 42 percent and fish and shellfish at 7 percent.
The ERS calculates per capita loss-adjusted food availability by taking per capita supplies of food available for human consumption and adjusting for some of the spoilage, plate waste, and losses in grocery stores, restaurants, and homes.
Loss-adjusted availability of fish and shellfish was 7.5 pounds per capita in 1970, but has averaged 9.4 pounds per capita since 2000, ERS said.
“Within the fish and shellfish category, shellfish (crustaceans, mollusks, squid, and other shellfish) had the greatest increase – more than doubling from 1.3 pounds per capita in 1970 to 3.2 pounds per capita in 2017,” ERS said.
From 2015-2017, beef had the largest percentage increase (6 percent) in per capita loss-adjusted availability, due in part to higher demand for red meat.
Photo courtesy of Cagkan Sayin/Shutterstock
