...Here we show you what the food is your basket might cost in ten years' time.
CHICKEN
There is likely to be a significant price increase in the traditional centrepiece of the Sunday roast. Chicken, as a 100 per cent grain-fed animal, is at the mercy of soaring grain prices, which have increased 50 per cent in the past six months. The rise is in response to factors such as drought in Australia, the rise in affluence encouraging increasing numbers of consumers in the developing world to eat meat, and crops being grown for biofuels rather than food. As 60 per cent of the cost of a chicken is its feed, grain will have a significant impact on what we pay.
BEEF
The United Nations estimates that it takes an average of 8kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef. As most British beef is fed on pastures during the summer, beef might avoid the worst of rising grain prices, which have doubled in the past year. “Stick with British grass-fed beef and you're making a green choice as well as one that might remain immune to grain prices,” says Evan Fraser, a sustainablility expert at Leeds University. Beef from the United States is likely to be worse hit since it is intensively reared on large quantities of feed....MORE
