Rising food prices hard to swallow

The cost of basic grocery items is steadily climbing, but wages aren't. Seamus Boyer finds out more.
A growing gulf between wages and the spiralling price of food is leading people to drastic measures to fill their stomachs.
Two recent reports from Statistics New Zealand paint a worrying picture about the affordability of food in this country.
In the 12 months to March, food prices have risen 5.5 per cent, salary and wage rates have increased by just 1.9 per cent.
As a result, more people are heading to food banks, growing their own food and getting creative to make home-cooked meals go further.
The biggest increases in food prices come from milk, up 9.3 per cent; beef, up 8.2 per cent; and lamb, up 16.4 per cent.
But prices also climbed for fruit and vegetables (up 10.4 per cent), ready-to-eat food (up 4.2 per cent), and grocery food (up 5.5 per cent).
The increase also covers a 2.5 per cent rise in October 2010, when GST went to 15 per cent.
Frances Archer, co-ordinator of the Carterton food bank, said the gap in affordability could be seen in a recent surge in food parcel demand around the country
She said it was hardly surprising, given the price of food and the price rises she had seen over the past five years.
"It's shocking when you go to the checkout and you see the price and think 'my God', and it's not even a trolley full. And it's everything, too. It's not just the staples like milk but it's things like fruit and vegetables."
It was easy for nutritionists to say you should eat five-plus fruit and vegetables a day, but many people could not afford that.
"A lot of people can only afford to give their children one piece of fruit a day," she said.
Home Budget Service manager Todd Button said people needed to learn how to make food go further for less money, but many had "forgotten how to feed themselves".
He said employers were also being hit hard and the wage bill was "the one variable" employers could control. "It's really not the employers' fault, they just respond to what the environment's telling them. They can't go to the electricity company and say they want to pay less for their electricity but they can go to their employees and say they can't give them a pay rise."
He said the problem was one of the previous Labour government's making - increasing the amount of money in circulation and affecting inflation. Families could no longer live like they did 15 years ago. "We used to get by with just one person working, but the basic working-class family now needs to have two people working," he said.