Chicken prices may double from next week


Australian consumers are about to pay a lot more for chicken, with at least one retailer saying prices will double from next week.

Chicken meat producers are bumping up their prices as the cost of feed grain soars because of drought in the United States.

The Australian landscape is dominated by seven large producers, but the top two - Baiada and Inghams - supply 70 per cent of the meat market.

Those two companies are vertically integrated, meaning they make their own feed and own the entire chain of production from chick hatchery to slaughterhouse, making it easier to pass on cost increases.

Chicken Meat Federation deputy director Vivien Kite says grain prices have increased significantly over the last three months on the back of forecasts of heavy drought impacts on the US corn crop.

"For example, we've seen wheat prices here increase by about $100 a tonne over the last three months and that represents an increase of around 30 per cent, perhaps even more," she said.

"Feed costs make up around about 65 to 70 per cent of the cost of producing a live chicken, so taking all of that into account we would expect that this surge in feed grain prices will push chicken meat production costs up by about 5 per cent."

A 5 per cent increase is the official forecast, but Australia's largest meat producer Baiada says its prices may need to rise by 40 per cent.

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"It all depends on supply. If there's a shortage of supply, it could rise between 10 and 40 per cent," managing director Simon Camilleri said.

Mr Camilleri says prices could rise for as long as nine months.

"The outlook on grain is we're going to have higher grain costs until at least April or May next year. In the future, that's what it's telling us so it could rise for as long as six or nine months," he said.

But after a glut of chicken meat in the past three months, the price for consumers is going to appear much greater.

Michael Braidotti, who runs a fresh food market in Wollongong, says it is more likely to double.

"I'm told it could go up as much as 100 per cent," he said.

"We'll probably go to around I'd say about 10 or 11 dollars a kilo more than likely."

Chicken is a favourite protein for Australians, who eat on average 43 kilograms a year - that's double than what they ate 30 years ago.

Mr Braidotti says consumers will probably swing to beef.

"The reason that will happen is because at the moment there's an oversupply of Australian red meat," he said.

"Therefore the demand will switch off white meat, the chicken, it'll go over to the red meat and that'll take up the slack and the demand for chicken will drop off and the price should drop back."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-27/chicken-prices-may-double-from-next-week/4160324

US Drought Linked to Climate Change


As one of the worst droughts ever continues to grip major portions of the United States, a new study links this summer’s record-setting dry spell, and other extreme weather events, to the world’s warming climate.
   
Parched earth

In Texas, the earth is parched. Rivers have dried up, and pasture land has turned brown from the heat. It’s been this way since January 2011. The southwestern state is the fourth largest producer of rice in the United States but the drought could cut production by half.

"Our total agri-income, farm gate value of our commodities here, were usually right around $290 million, and a large percentage of that comes from rice production," Texas agricultural extension agent Peter McGuill says. "You’re talking about a big chunk of money that’s not going to be circulating within the economy.”

James Bradbury, a climate scientist with the World Resources Institute, a global environmental think tank, explains that La Nina, a natural weather pattern that periodically cools the Pacific Ocean, helped trigger the drought by bringing warmer, dryer weather to the American South, which has been hardest hit by the drought.
US Drought Linked to Climate Change

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“Time will tell the extent to which rising temperatures and global climate change contributed to this specific event and the severity of it," Bradbury says. "I think there is a good likelihood that the temperatures that we’re seeing and the heat wave that we’re seeing is all consistent with a warmer world, that that's exacerbating these drought conditions."

Human influence

Peter Stott, who leads the climate monitoring team for the Met Office Hadley Centre, a climate research institution in southwest Britain, says La Nina is only part of the story. He co-authored the American Meteorological Society study which links climate change with the Texas drought and other extreme weather events.   

“We did find clear evidence for human influence on the Texas heat wave and also in the very unusual temperatures we had in the United Kingdom in 2011,” he says. 

The study finds the 2011 Texas drought was 20 times more likely to occur than in the 1960s as a result of human-induced climate changing emissions in the atmosphere. The heat wave last November in England was 62 times more likely to have occurred than 50 years ago, according to the report. 

While not all extreme weather events can be linked to climate change, Stott and his colleagues found evidence that they are more probable in a warmer world.

“What we must remember is that it is the combination of natural variations of climate that is important here," Stott says. "We saw that in La Nina in Texas, but, over and above that, there is this additional climate effect that can and has indeed in the last year led to a greater vulnerability to extreme weather.”

Worsening conditions

Drought continues to parch other parts of the U.S., sparking wildfires and damaging crops in one third of the nation’s counties. U.S. scientists predict that these conditions could even get worse in the coming months, which doesn’t bode well for Iowa farmer Tom Zaputil’s corn crop, which hasn’t had a significant rain since June.

"This here is strictly dryness here," Zaputil says, referring to his crop. "These stalks will cannibalize themselves to pull moisture out of it in order to feed that ear, and these will get brittle and very susceptible to high wind damage later on in the season.”

Stott says the new findings are a wake-up call that the adverse impact of a warming climate can be reduced by acting now to cut carbon-dioxide emissions from cars, factories and buildings.

“So hopefully people can understand the implication of future climate change and relate that to what’s happening at the moment.”

Stott says the study is the first of what he hopes will be annual reports examining the connection between global warming and specific extreme weather events.


http://www.voanews.com/content/us-drought-linked-to-climate-change/1447839.html

The scaremonger at it again. Bend over like a good little greeny.

Going by your logic, there is no global warming because Australia is colder than usual.

I take it from all the scaremongering from the AGW loons, we can be assured that it is ok for the skeptics to start using weather events now to help their arguments along.

progressiveslol wrote on Jul 28^th, 2012 at 7:50am:

The scaremonger at it again. Bend over like a good little greeny. Going by your logic, there is no global warming because Australia is colder than usual. I take it from all the scaremongering from the AGW loons, we can be assured that it is ok for the skeptics to start using weather events now to help their arguments along.

progs can't look his kids in the eye!!  :D :D :D

The Greens see big profits in politics, energy, food, water & oil - lets all sue their freakin' 'rse off... :)

What will happen to the people if all the foods will double its price each week? Should this be the time for us to grow our own chicken? Plant our own veggies? :D

progressiveslol wrote on Jul 28^th, 2012 at 7:50am:

The scaremonger at it again. Bend over like a good little greeny. Going by your logic, there is no global warming because Australia is colder than usual. I take it from all the scaremongering from the AGW loons, we can be assured that it is ok for the skeptics to start using weather events now to help their arguments along.

FOOD PRICES WILL BE AN EVER-PRESENT NASTY HARBINGER OF FURTHER DEATH TO MANY PEOPLES OF THIS WORLD: THIS IS CERTAIN FACT! IT;S ALREADY FACT BUT IT WILL BE REINFORCED FACT....

GEEZ, WORDS CAN'T EXPLAIN HOW MESSED UP PROGS IS!

Stanleys wrote on Sep 11^th, 2012 at 12:10am:

What will happen to the people if all the foods will double its price each week? Should this be the time for us to grow our own chicken? Plant our own veggies? :D

The price incentive will never be there for the rich nations to feel they have to do that: our food prices, in adjusted terms of course, will never double!

Rural folk grow the food and city folk consume it. Division of labor: efficiency breeds success! This is the status quo and all efforts will be made to retain it as change is difficult!!

Everyone hates moving....  ;)

why would you start a thread like this ?... your just inviting CODs to whine about the price of tomatoes again .....