Annual food price forecast indicates a family of four will pay an extra $700 on groceries in 2021

Food Price Report partly blames increase on pandemic

An annual forecast of food prices indicates we’ll be spending a lot more to feed our family.

The Food Price Report, a yearly collaboration between universities across Canada, this year predicts food prices will rise by three to five percent in 2021. this means a typical Canadian family could pay another $700 extra on food next year, the biggest leap in more than a decade.

According to the study, a family of four is expected to spend an average $13,907 on groceries over the course of next year, which is $695 more than the same family would have paid in 2020.

“Families with less means will be significantly challenged in 2021, and many will be left behind,” says Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, project lead and Director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University. “Immunity to higher food prices requires more cooking, more discipline and more research. It’s as simple as that.”

The rise in food prices is outpacing general inflation, and experts say the excess rise is linked to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. “The COVID-19 pandemic will potentially have long-lasting effects on Canadians’ relationship to food,” explains Alyssa Gerhardta PhD Student in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie who worked on the project. “We’ve seen more demand for online services in both food retail and food service, an increase in Canadians gardening and preparing meals at home and renewed interest in local food supply chains.”

The Food Price Report is released yearly through work done at Dalhousie University, the University of Guelph, the University of Saskatchewan, and the University of British Columbia. This year marks the 11th in which the report was released. The Food Price report is available here.

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