The Food Price Increase is Coupled With Shortages and Moving to Crisis

*Update: I haven’t been able to find Lady Finger Bananas at any stores and they’re not available wholesale organic.

This is accompanying text for a video I posted in Syntropia where I share a few tips for how to recognise your value and use that in negotiations.

The food "crisis" is definitely developing, I have been out chatting to the fresh fruit and veg market - wholesale and farm gate (farm gate is from the farm straight to the big markets, wholesale is from the big markets to the shops). 

Since I last ran my numbers, my farm gate price has risen - Okra: 100%, Banana: 50%, Taro: 100%. This is for conventional prices only, not organically certified.

My strategy is based on low cost production (syntropy),and selling organically certified produce at conventional prices in order to take care of key retailers and wholesalers who I can align with and work together in business. Any surplus produce I will sell to the organic market.

I have made a prediction some time ago that certified organic producers will suffer unless they move to more syntropic methods, as consumer affordability is becoming an issue - families need to pay excessive rent/mortgage payments, higher fuel prices, higher food prices and most other consumer goods. Certified organic producers will not be able to raise the price too much as people simply turn to buying conventional food to keep their household budget balanced, this means that the increasing costs of purchased certified organic inputs are absorbed by the producer, to put it simply, their costs go up faster than their sale prices. There are exceptions of course, people will still buy organic carrots, pumkin, perhaps potato etc, as they are produced cheaper by the really big organic producers, but greens etc are already being put back on the shelves as consumers need to save that $6 that they would have spent on a bunch of kale and use it to buy bread etc. 

My prediction is that due to the underlying fundamentals, the gap (already is) will close between organic and conventional, as the underlying expenses push conventional prices up and demand destruction occurs in the organic market. 

So now is an excellent time to get into syntropy, whether it be to secure your food supply at home or get into this professionally as the business of tomorrow. 

For those in Europe - don't be put off by those huge greenhouses in Spain etc, yes, they do depress prices but this is a lag, these businesses are leveraged on massive debt, cheap labour and inputs which were artificially cheap (strong Euro, higher access to credit, minerals and fossil fuels exploited by western companies). This is a temporary phenomenon, it may take some time to correct back into balance, but I'm willing to bet that over time the prices will increase on the input side, debt will be harder to maintain and the expense of logistics will increase. I think for Europe, now is the time to start getting good at alternatives while there is a reasonable amount of time. 

I could go on and on about the fundamentals (natural gas, oil, chemicals, credit etc), but that's another topic, perhaps for another time. The best thing to do is keep records of prices in your stores, freshness, availability etc. Keep in mind that anomalies can throw you, that's why you need to keep an eye on supply and prices over time, and don't be thrown by things like loss leaders, temporary supply gluts and price wars etc. 

The accomanying video is about negotiating and recognising your value amidst this changing world, if this is important to you, joining Syntropia will be well worth your while, as marketing as well as producing are frequently discussed.