Food prices

Since then, the price cap has risen by 17%, And according to the latest forecast from Cornwall Insight, the typical household energy bill will rise to approximately £2,000 in January.

This is bad news for consumers at a time when their finances are facing pressure on multiple fronts, including housing costs, food prices and other essential expenditure.

The Consumer Scotland boss said it should be an urgent priority for the government to identify ways to provide targeted financial support to those households that need it most this winter, and that special attention should be given to those households with additional support needs that mean their consumption is higher than typical usage.

He added that around 170,000 Scottish households rely on heating oil, or LPG, to heat their homes, noting that the UK government had already made funding available to support these consumers, but pointing out in the context of current price forecasts and higher winter demand, further support may be required.

And that article was an exclusive by Brian Donnelly and read for you today by me, Bob Leiser.

This is from the Herald Scotland of Wednesday the 28th of October from the news section.

More than 8 in 10 UK adults fear rising food prices.

This article is by Kulsham Shabir.

The International Monetary Fund is warning of a worldwide recession if the war in the Middle East doesn't end soon.

If the conflict drags on, the IMF says energy and food prices will spike higher, stunting economic growth across the globe.

Now hold on, maybe everything will be fine for the US, right? Because we're told that the US is a net exporter of oil.

But the reality is that the United States actually imports more crude oil than it exports.

It shows the price of the most commonly used fertilizer in the world.

It's going up right now.

It's getting to the same levels we saw during the Ukraine war in 2022 when global food prices caused political crises across the developing world.

And this fertilizer called urea is made mostly from natural gas.

This week, I pulled three headlines, corn, college tuition, and a digitally native government bond.

underneath all three the same plank is moving so let's start with something that every single one of us has to do well we got to eat so the question really is who sets the price of food now we normally think that supply and demand does that right i mean that's what we've been taught and more supply should mean lower prices But I guess the real question is lower prices for whom? Look at just what happened to corn.

The USDA surprised the market with a larger crop estimate and corn prices, they plummeted.

So the farmer produces more.

Hello, and welcome to Macro Dose, a podcast hosted by me, James Meadway, that brings you your weekly fix of everything economics in a quick 15-minute roundup.

In today's episode, we'll be looking at, first, an update on the road ahead for food prices as El Nino builds; second, the Green Party conference, some much needed economic policies have been introduced; and third, how the year ahead might be a moment of massive divergence in the world economy.

[upbeat music] Our first story this week is all about food prices, which last month hit their highest level in nearly four years as a very strong El Nino builds.

The UN's Food and Agricultural Organization Food Price Index summarizes global food prices, and this has reached its highest level since November 2022.

Wheat prices have been pushed up by the collapse of the Black Sea trade, sugar by fears over El Nino weather, and palm oil by risks to Southeast Asian output.

The FAO's chief economist, Maximo Torero, described a, quote, "persistent and increasingly broad-based buildup in global commodity prices, with hummus, the Black Sea, and climate shocks all pressing on energy, transport, and food at once.