Say, "Cheese!"

Last year, I wrote a column encouraging our people to plant gardens in back yards to help take the bite out of the cost of kai and gain some measure of self-sufficiency. Perhaps they should also get a cow. I ‘had a cow’ last week when I examined a bill from PAK ‘n SAVE after purchasing bread, milk, butter and cheese. Statistics show cheese up 45.5 per cent, milk up 21.1 per cent, bread up 13.1 per cent and butter up 86 per cent over the past year. And families are hurting.

The experts blame drought caused by global warming and the high costs of feed grain because corn and wheat are being sold to produce ethanol. But this shift didn’t happen overnight. The truth is that food is becoming “the new black” – as in oil. If OPEC taught the world anything it was that fortunes could be made if you can control world markets. Take cheese for example.
Every Friday at 10am, in Green Bay, Wisconson, half a dozen major producers set the price for American style cheeses like Cheddar, Monterey and Colby, most of it for export. Although there are approximately 40 members of the National Cheese Exchange, only a few show up for a meeting that typically lasts half an hour. So if the Yanks can get $12 for a kilogram of cheese on the world market, well, why shouldn’t we? All Fonterra had to do was take their cut and give farmers a massive raise so they would produce more.

Since cows become more valuable on the hoof instead of in the freezer, the price of mince increases. Sheep and pork producers follow suit because … well, because they can. And, here in Aotearoa, all of these prices are subject to GST. So the government wins too. Is it too large a stretch of imagination to picture food riots in Kaitaia, the same as are happening in the Third World?

In the short term, there is a lot families can do: Plant gardens. Begin baking your own bread. Cut down on the amount of meat and dairy products purchased and take your whanau fishing more often. One thing in our favour is that dairy and meat products have a limited shelf life. So, not buying cheese, milk, and butter one week should result in sale prices the following week.

In the long term, it is time our government eliminated GST on foodstuffs. Countries like Canada do not charge GST on food purchased in the supermarket. The government argues that it would be too difficult to parse food purchases from the list of taxable goods. But if the Saudis and Venezuelans can get away with charging their citizens 12 cents a litre for petrol, then why is it we are paying 12 dollars for a block of cheese?