Inflation is impacting food prices. Photo / 123RF
A first happened to us recently. For years we have been getting our groceries delivered, ordered online, arriving within hours. During the height of Covid-19 lockdowns maybe a few days, but excellent service.
But alas, our last order was short a heap of stuff. It’s never happened before so we did not really know what to do.
I explored the relevant website and got help, twice. We noticed some stuff missing, sorted it and then a few days later found more stuff missing. Twice I had to get on the computer actually.
On both occasions I was dealt with fantastically. On the first occasion we actually needed the goods so I messaged a live person, Lisa, who kindly arranged for the items to be delivered. A few days later when we went to find some stuff and couldn’t we decided just to get a refund.
I did with Olive; the name of the little person on the bottom right of the screen who does not really exist but can really help.
The refund arrived within minutes, job done.
We do not know what happened; maybe a couple of bags just got missed when the green bins were being prepared for our driver.
Maybe something more nefarious happened. If that was the case we do not mind, the culprit obviously needed the food. You see stealing food is done for a reason, hunger, poverty, not enough money to eat.
Food is not like other goods, it’s the staff of life. I did grumpily mutter to myself “if you needed it you only had to ask”, I’ll just get more.
Now me being me, a suspicious old ex-cop, I do go straight to the worst-case scenario at times like this. But then also, being me, someone who would never charge anybody for stealing food I just shrugged and moved on.
Apparently, this is a common occurrence with home delivery groceries, perhaps a sad indictment on our society that we have people who just do not earn enough for the basics of life, people who are in paid employment.
No one should be going hungry in this country. We produce enough food to feed 40 million people per year. Think about that, 40 million, eight times the size of New Zealand.
We feed the world, why cannot we feed our own well first. No one in a so-called civilised Western society should suffer hunger, lack of shelter and poverty. Certainly not a society whose economy is founded on agriculture. A country which is basically a huge farm.
Yes, we have a huge benefit system that supports hundreds of thousands of us but it is still not enough in these times of inflation and huge food price increases.
It’s insane some of the prices we now have to pay for basics. $8.50 for 500gm of butter. $5.00 for a loaf of bread. Those are not luxuries, it is basic food. Milk, a necessity for small children, $3.81 for two litres.
I could quote the prices from the 1970s for you, in fact I will. Butter was .25c, bread 7c a full loaf, milk .4c a pint. Now that’s over 50 years ago and yes we have had massive inflation.
What is to be done? Well, the experts say we need more competition in our supermarket chains. We have a duopoly in many parts of the country. We have to pay the price just to eat.
Labour has started to address this but nothing is happening, yet again. Probably a working group, a study or two but when will the rubber hit the road. When will we start to see cheaper food prices?
Our present government would, one thinks, be the first to address this need. Labour, the little person’s government. The outfit that introduced the Welfare State, supported unionism, increasing the wages of the low paid.
Well, get on with it. Go back to your founding principles of democratic socialism please. Look at your constituents, the working people, the poor, the sick and the displaced. Their lives are tough enough without having to worry about having just enough food to eat.
If you want any chance of a third term, and that’s really debatable right now, you need to do something transformational in the coming months. You could start with price controls from the supplier upwards. Supermarkets only making a limited profit on any item, suppliers and growers being treated fairly.
I couldn’t care less really about a few missed items in our groceries, I’ll sort it, but many in our communities cannot even afford to buy the items in the first place, let alone lose them.