A Sad Day for Pizza: Price of Flour Skyrockets
I can understand why oil has topped $100 per barrel. I can understand why I feel like a homeless person trying to make ends meet when I go to London and buy a pint of her majesty’s finest lager with my wilted US$.
I used to feel like a hairy chested manly man on all things international, proudly whipping out my USA passport, and glowing in the respect that it commanded on a world stage. Politics, diplomacy, economics, technology, innovation…America had it all. And there wasn’t a conversation topic that didn’t allow me to paternalisticly rub a foreigners head and tell him that while we were great on all fronts his country was OK too - in a hot girl in school earnestly telling the fat dumpy girl that she has some great qualities too kind of way.
Now, I’m resigned to the prepubescent, socially awkward feelings I have whenever I interact with someone from another country on everything from economics to war, purchasing power, health care or even sports.
But I can’t quite understand the experience I had on my way home last night. I stopped by the pizza place on my street corner to grab a slice before going to bed. The normally chatty pizza guy had sad puppy dog eyes. He started to tell me about his troubles. I was his drunk late night shrink. He told me that price of flour, his main ingredient, has gone from $11 for a 50 pound bag to $50 in a relatively short time.
Generally, I thought flour supply, and therefore price, was one of the few things we can control as a country. Isn’t that what middle America is for? To produce corn, wheat and soy in abundance so I can buy an affordable $2 slice of pizza on 8th street and 2nd avenue?
It’s kind of scary, as an American, to think that basic food crops are becoming, while not unaffordable (I don’t think I’ll buy a 50 pound bag of flour any time soon), certainly more expensive.
A food supply shock to go with our credit shock, oil shock, housing shock and a good old fashioned economy draining war. Food industry margins will be squeezed since vendors don’t want to shock consumers with overnight price hikes. But they will be forced to pass along cost increases eventually. Slowly, the price of pizza will reach, or even surpass, $3 per slice. Those are numbers that are real to me.
Peter Cervieri is co-founder of and Director of Business Development for ScribeMedia.Org. His fetish is collecting business cards.
if we keep on like this, the plague that kills humanity is not in the form of a virus, but in our own monetary trading system.