Food inflation

Stuff reports:

Statistics New Zealand also measures the cost of a standard supermarket trolley full of grub over time – called “food price inflation”.

That index has jumped by one third over the last 10 years, and led to a 25 per cent drop in our purchasing power.

Food prices have indeed gone up 33% in the last ten years, but I’m not sure about that figure for a drop in purchasing power as after tax incomes have gone up more than that.

It is useful to break the 33% down by year. For each year to October, food inflation was:

• 2004 – 1.1%
• 2005 – 1.1%
• 2006 – 4.0%
• 2007 – 3.6%
• 2008 – 9.9%
• 2009 – 2.0%
• 2010 – 5.1%
• 2011 – 1.1%
• 2012 – 0.3%
• 2013 – 0.8%

So from Oct 05 to Oct 08, food prices increased a massive 17.5% approx. In the last 36 months they’ve gone up 2.2% only.