If the title above is accurate let’s hope our wallets can grow enough to make up the difference. As populations grow and more land is developed, less land is available for growing food. In some cases landowners (and who can blame them?) choose to grow crops with higher prices – wine grapes for example – than can be commanded by other fruits and vegetables. Either way, it means food needs to be hauled greater and greater distances, at higher and higher cost.
It’s exactly because of factors like these that the Argricultural Land Reserve was created in the first place, but the ALR continues to be threatened.
Those of us with green thumbs and the property on which to prove just how green, can feel better than others about the monetary and nutritional value of their produce. For those with unlimited budgets the rising commercial price of produce is not a big deal. But for the rest of us the trend of steadily rising prices is not good. A serving of irony is added with recent news reports citing huge drops in expected illness directly related to amounts of fruits and vegetables consumed. Sure, we knew already, but the freshly presented data just serves to drive home the point.
We can’t (physically) afford not to eat like so many respected experts say we should…. while more and more of us can’t (financially) afford the wholesome produce we so clearly need.
It’s an issue we’ll all need to sink our teeth into… probably sooner than we’d like.
