Anybody who has failed to notice that food has become very expensive must have just emerged from under a rock.
My personal benchmark is a minimally processed food — flour. Not only minimally processed, but all of our flour comes from Canadian-grown wheat.
I buy a fair amount because I bake bread twice a week, something I have been doing for more than a half-century.
Weekly, I bake three loaves (550 grams each) of whole wheat bread. One loaf is eaten as is, while the others are sliced, bagged and frozen.
I also bake baguettes (three at 250 g each), which I have not tried to freeze. The dough rises overnight at room temperature. At 6 a.m., I shape the loaves, ready for baking, and go back to bed. At 8 a.m., I bake them for 20 minutes.
My wife and I consume one for breakfast. The second loaf will be toasted. The third will be “revived” by wetting under the tap, and then heating for 15 minutes in a low oven. It comes out like freshly baked.
I also bake a crusty rye bread with caraway seeds (one just left my oven), a fancy braided egg bread, and buns depending on how the spirit moves me. My neighbours sometimes receive a loaf just for being neighbours.
That’s why I use a lot of flour.
On Feb. 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation” — just don’t call it a “war” in Russia — against Ukraine. Meant to last just weeks, Putin’s forces were stopped and decimated on the road to Kyiv. Putin gradually mustered pretty much the full might of one of the world’s most powerful military machines to bear on Ukraine, a far smaller country. (See my column in BarrieToday from August 2023.)
Before the invasion, Ukraine was an agricultural powerhouse. One of the world’s largest exporters of edible oils, it also supplied 15 per cent of the world’s corn, 13 per cent of its barley and 10 per cent of its wheat. Ukraine’s east, now littered with unexploded munitions and military wreckage, will take years to be rendered safe for farming.
Many African and Middle Eastern countries face steeply rising food prices, even famine caused by a shortage of Ukrainian grain and edible oils, their usual supplier of these foodstuffs.
Initially, Ukraine’s agricultural exports were blocked by the Russian navy. However, Ukraine managed to destroy so many Russian warships that the remainder of Russia’s Black Sea fleet is bottled up, helpless, east of the Crimean Peninsula. With its ports damaged and often attacked, Ukrainian food exports must be far lower than “normal.”
Russia, too, was a major supplier of edible oils and wheat; much was exported via the Black Sea. The danger to Russian shipping, coupled with the “Western” embargo on its exports, has removed even more basic foodstuffs from world markets.
Within a year, I saw the price of five-kilogram bags of bread flour go from $8 to $13, a 60 per cent increase. The cost of growing, milling and transporting wheat in Canada cannot have risen by 60 per cent. Our farmers are just enjoying the benefit of rising world prices. Since they are at the mercy of drought, unseasonal rain, and changeable world prices, I don’t begrudge them their periods of good fortune.
Wheat has been a staple for Egyptians and other North Africans who eat it as pita bread (a flatbread), couscous (a rice substitute), freekeh (roasted green wheat) and other wheaten foods.
Taking Ukrainian (and some Russian) corn off the market also impacted Africa. Maize (corn) is a staple for many Africans who consume it as polenta, and now pay far more for it.
In North America, corn is an important animal feed. Our livestock farmers pay more, even though it is domestically grown, raising prices of our beef, pork, poultry and dairy products.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre claims our prime minister is responsible for rising food prices, but fails to mention the cost of these foods increased worldwide. American and German foods have risen steeply, but neither levies a “carbon tax.”
Even Australia, far from the Middle East and Caucasian conflicts, has seen rising food prices. These rose far more rapidly after the Ukraine conflict. The finger of blame should be aimed at Putin, not Justin Trudeau.
Poilievre also claims the “carbon tax” is an important factor increasing Canadian food prices. In an earlier column, from September 2024, I estimated its contribution and showed it was trivial, whether on the transport of beef or wheat from Alberta (less than one cent per kilogram) and on heating or cooling of retail stores.
Soaring petroleum prices have influenced the cost of growing and shipping foodstuffs worldwide far more than has our modest “carbon tax." The Ukraine-Russian war (sorry, Mr. Putin, it really is a war) has had a far bigger effect.
It has been estimated this war caused petroleum prices to spike by more than 50 per cent. Earlier, modern-day pirates based in Somalia began preying on Red Sea shipping in 2018.
Although these attacks were limited, they caused some shipping to reroute around South Africa, incurring the cost of a longer journey burning more fuel. Even shipping that continued to transit the Suez Canal faced increased costs imposed by insurance companies and/or on-board private security personnel.
More recently, Yemeni Houthi rebels began attacking Red Sea shipping. So far, there have been 60 such attacks. These are not pirates in small boats, but missiles; defending against them is difficult. Instead, shipping, including foodstuffs and petroleum, has been avoiding the Suez Canal, opting for the far longer South African route, imposing extra costs (fuel, crew, ship maintenance) on their cargoes.
Although petroleum prices have eased recently, that has not (yet) affected the cost of grocery baskets.
None of this has anything to do with our prime minister.
Once again, Mr. Poilievre, if you must point fingers, Putin, and the Iranian paymasters of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Yemen’s Houthis, should be your target, not Trudeau or Liberal policy.
We could be heading for yet another spike in food prices after Donald Trump takes office. Imposing his proposed 25 per cent tariff on Canadian and Mexican goods will affect farmers by boosting the cost of agricultural equipment, pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer.
Slowing the movement of foodstuffs, and making shipping via the U.S. more complicated and difficult, particularly for Mexican and Central American fruit and vegetables, is also likely to increase prices.
Now that Trudeau has announced he will resign, I appreciate that he has done much that is good for Canada.
Of course, he also failed to accomplish many things I felt should have been priorities.
However, I fail to understand how expensive groceries can be blamed on him.
Barrie resident Peter Bursztyn is a self-proclaimed “recovering scientist” who has a passion for all things based in science and the environment. The now-retired former university academic has taught and carried out research at universities in Africa, Britain and Canada, and is a former NDP candidate locally. As a member of BarrieToday’s community advisory board, he also writes a semi-regular column.
