The Lucknow Sentinel, 1981-04-29, Page 7e
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Chicken feed, said the youngster on the
main street as he kicked a penny into the
gutter.
He didn't even stop to pick it up; a
penny means so little to kids today.
But the expression he used. is an
anachronism, something out of its proper
time. Shakespeare's pliiys had dozens of
them.
The cost of raising livestock and
poultry has tripled in the last 10 years.
The two major costs of producing a
pound of chidten are the cost of the
original chick and the cost of feed. Those
two factors account for more than 65 per
cent of the costs hi raising chickens to
market weight.
Other factors include labor, energy and
overhead including borrowing costs. All
these components are going through the
roof, too, but the chicken feed — the stuff
poultry eats — is the highest single factor
in the production of chickens whether for
layers or the table.
Shipping, killing and packing costs
more than double the price before the
food reaches your table. The Ontario
Federation of Agriculture has estimated
that, for every dollar received at the
farm gate, another $1.08 is added before
the products reach your table.
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,
isn't chicken feed
• The same high fed costs are true for
hogs and cattle. In fact, the pork
producers can prove, to their satisfaction
anyway, that it costs fanners as much as
$84.47 a hundredweight to raise a hog.
Have you chedEed what they are getting
for a hundredweight lately? It has been
hovering around ;62.
How pork producers stay in business is
a mystery. Feed accounts for $48 to $50 of
that $84.47. Any public school
mathematician can figure out that, if
these figures are accurate, hog farmers
are losing more than $22 for every
hundredvieight shipped.
Wienfigured on costrof-production, I
suggest most producers can prove they
are losing money.
The gap between what farmers get -
the farm -gate price -- and what the
viten we oric.aloal by Sot, liaise,E14204a d 14,7,041 Onu N321 2C7
consumer pays, the retail price, is
widening if we can take the federation of
agriculture's figUreto. The federation
says the farm prices for a selected food
basket have been rising by about $1.06 a
year for the past few years while retail
prices for the same food basket have
been rising at an average of $3.62 cents a
year.
In 1979, the federation says, the farmer
received 59.2 cents of every food dollar
spent on a food basket but last year, the
farmer received 55.8 cents.
The processing, distributing and
retailing indushies get slammed for
taking more money but they, too, have
higher costs to absorb including labor
and energy. With the tremendous con-
cedration in the food industry, there is
little doubt that these huge, multi-
nationals certainly have the power to
gouge consumers. However, recent in-
vesligetions indicate many of them are in
trouble. Their profit margins are
frequently, they say, less than three per
cent and the return on their investment is
paltiy 6.5 per cent.
Compared to interest rates in most
other sectors of the economy, that 6.5 per
cent is pretty grim.
So what is the answer?
Higher prices for food, without a doubt.
Canadians today are the best fed
people in the world and are getting their ,
food at a lower cost than any other nation
in the world with the possible exception i
of thelJnited States.
Food costs cannot go any place else but
Up, especially if there is a poor harvest in
the Soviet Union this year. When they go•
hunting the world for grain, the cost of
"grain goes up. When the cost of grain
increases, that chicken feed needed to
put eggs and poultry on the table goes sky
high- _
It is no longer chicken feed. It cods big
buds to feed chickens or any other
farm animal.
Be prepared to pay more for food this
year and for the nett few years after
that.
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