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The USDA shares detailed data on food pricing. http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/food-prices,-expenditures-costs.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/

The USDA shares detailed data on food pricing. http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/food-prices,-expenditures-costs.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-markets-prices/food-pric... Price Spreads from Farm to Consumer: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/price-spreads-from-farm-to-consumer/interactive-chart-price-spreads-and-food-markets.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/price-spreads-from-far... They also have good data on regional differences, in case you were wondering why the author was excited about $0.50/lb bananas and $1 pomegranates.

mikekchar 10y ago
I've wanted a website for price spreads for ages. I keep ending up doing the math myself whenever one of these topics come up. Thanks! In general, people have no idea that the retail price is 4-10 times the price for the underlying farm price. While shipping and processing take up some of the price, the limited data that I could find is that distributors are the ones taking all the profit. If you cut out a few distributors you can easily cut the price of certain goods in half. I'm guessing this is what most of these ethnic supermarkets are doing. I'm really hoping that with the age of the internet farmers' groups will form groups that sell more or less directly to the customer and see some profit for themselves (which they can ultimately use to improve production practices). For an example of how badly farmers are getting squeezed: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/price-spreads-from-farm-to-consumer/interactive-chart-price-spreads-and-food-markets.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/price-spreads-from-far... You can see that the retail price has nearly doubled while the production price has only gone up by 30% since 1999. Some random inflation calculators on the internet tell me that since 1999 inflation has gone up 44% so the real price going to the farmers has dropped considerably. Of all the economic issues I'm worried about, this ranks at the very top.

mikekchar 10y ago

I've wanted a website for price spreads for ages. I keep ending up doing the math myself whenever one of these topics come up. Thanks! In general, people have no idea that the retail price is 4-10 times the price for the underlying farm price. While shipping and processing take up some of the price, the limited data that I could find is that distributors are the ones taking all the profit. If you cut out a few distributors you can easily cut the price of certain goods in half. I'm guessing this is what most of these ethnic supermarkets are doing. I'm really hoping that with the age of the internet farmers' groups will form groups that sell more or less directly to the customer and see some profit for themselves (which they can ultimately use to improve production practices). For an example of how badly farmers are getting squeezed: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/price-spreads-from-farm-to-consumer/interactive-chart-price-spreads-and-food-markets.aspx http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/price-spreads-from-far... You can see that the retail price has nearly doubled while the production price has only gone up by 30% since 1999. Some random inflation calculators on the internet tell me that since 1999 inflation has gone up 44% so the real price going to the farmers has dropped considerably. Of all the economic issues I'm worried about, this ranks at the very top.