At the beginning of this virus outbreak, many grocery store shelves were bared. Consumers found it very mush hard to locate toilet paper meat, and flour. With times, the private enterprise system worked its magic and shipped a various staples to supermarkets nationwide. For cash-strapped households, it was bittersweet because the new arrived food became a lot more expensive to be thought.
The cost of food has risen around 5% every month since may in the United States, some items are more expensive than others. This year, prices of meat, fish, eggs and poultry. have spiked more than 9% collectively. It doesn't matter if you eat at home or in restaurant, you are paying more for food. Before the pandemic, shrinkflation was prevalent, now consumers are likely doling out more for less.
China is another market grappling with ballooning food prices. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the nation’s food prices swelled 11.2% in August from the same time a year ago, with pork leading the way 53.6% amid the African Swine Flu and the virus outbreak.
And this not only in the United States. Canada, for example, shoppers are also witnessing a spike in their grocery bills by as much as 2% and growing. With COVID-19 precautions and higher transportation expenditures, food production is costing more than it was before the pandemic. Another factor is that more consumers are buying their groceries online, which typically comes with almost 9% markup.
The World Bank sounded the alarm that the worst is yet to come because of disrupted supply chains.
As the coronavirus crisis unfolds, disruptions in domestic food supply chains, other shocks affecting food production, and loss of incomes and remittances are creating strong tensions. Food security risks in many countries, the group stated in a reports.
Global Food Shortage
The U.N. Committee on World Food Security forecasted that more people will die as a result of malnutrition and comparable diseases as a direct result of the pandemic. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) projected that 260 million people worldwide will face food insecurity. Oxfam International anticipates 10,000 people will disappear each day from hunger by the end of 2020.
Food insecurity is one of the most pronounced in Venezuela, North Korea, Lebanon, Africa, Yemen, and Syria . Many of these places were already enduring humanitarian crises, before the Coronavirus amplified their plight. Recent months, there has been speculation that China could experience a food crisis, floods, and insect infestations in the aftermath of the pandemic. But the government has kept quiet about the severity of the looming threat, choosing to import and stockpile millions of tons of , corn, rice, pork and grain for its strategic reserves.
Analysts are concerned that if farmers are suffering from acute hunger, they might decide to prioritize buying food over planting seeds for tomorrow.
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