(The Center Square) – Rising grocery store prices over the last few years aren’t the fault of farmers or “greedy” corporations, a conservative North Carolina research organization concludes in a new documentary series and report.
Instead, higher energy prices and more regulations are the culprit, according to the John Locke Foundation documentary series Sowing Resilience.
It recommends a list of changes including streamlining the zoning and permitting process, and building coalitions to fight overly restrictive federal and state mandates.
The series examines policy decisions on agriculture that were made during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and the policy reactions to it exposed supply-chain and other vulnerabilities that still require solutions,” states a foundation’s report that accompanies the series. “The pandemic also worsened the growing food insecurity problem in North Carolina. Over 10% of North Carolinians struggle to secure enough food for a healthy lifestyle, according to the USDA. Only about 6% of adults in the state report consuming at least two servings of vegetables or fruits per day. Meanwhile, over one-third are obese, according to the Body Mass Indexes.”
At the same time, grocery prices skyrocketed 25% from 2019-2023, the Foundation said. The last three years are in the Biden administration, which pushes Vice President Kamala Harris and her first price gouging federal law on food suppliers and grocers.
“Climate policies such as carbon pricing add significant expenses to farmers’ operating budgets, translating to an annual increase in a family of four’s grocery bills by $1,330,” the Locke Foundation said. “Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting requirements and emissions monitoring increase participating farms’ annual operating expenses by an estimated 34%, beyond the reach of many smaller farms despite their need for market access.”
The report challenges the assertion that higher food prices are the result of corporate greed.
“There is competition across the many segments of the food industry,” the foundation states. “Widespread and coordinated price gouging is unlikely.”
It cites higher fuel costs as a key reason for rising prices at the grocery stores.
Overly restrictive zoning and permitting requirements have also hampered food production in North Carolina, the foundation report concludes.
“One of the most substantial challenges with zoning regulations is their complexity and cost of compliance,” the reports says. “Farmers often face a maze of rules and regulations that require time, money, and expertise to navigate – diverting resources away from essential farming activities and placing an undue strain on farmers, particularly smaller operations with limited staff and financial resources.”
Now fools can believe the corrupt, Lying, unethical, self-righteous, color changing Democrat Khameleon Harris or not…. But…
** It cites higher fuel costs as a key reason for rising prices at the grocery stores. (Biden/Harris war on U.S. oil production)
** “Climate policies such as carbon pricing add significant expenses to farmers’ operating budgets, translating to an annual increase in a family of four’s grocery bills by $1,330,”
** grocery prices skyrocketed 25% from 2019-2023,
Higher prices don’t reflect corporate greed, but Democrat party malfeasance in the governance of our economy, born of a collective government greed to insinuate their tenacious tentacles into every facet of your now socially surrendered lives of government dependency. It’s the Demonic Democrat party solicitous socialist circle of life that leads to the American vulture circling death of American Jobs, wealth and Prosperity. Higher prices under the Harris Biden economic boondoggle were conceived in the mendacious minds of people who actually think you can print enough infinite worthless money and dump it into finite limited housing markets, food markets, stock markets, energy markets and meat markets and not expect the laws of supply and demand alone to drive up the dollar costs on the limited goods being bartered for, then shut down the very forms of energy need to manufacture, plant, harvest, transport to market and produce those commodities,,,,the very thing that devalues your dollar in buying power, creates more shortages and drives the price of these commodities through the roof. The logical conclusion is that they are either outright criminally insane and greedy, or just guilty of incompetence, having been placed into positions of authority they were miseducated way beyond their brainless means and I.Q. ability to absorb and use the information properly. Probably and OBVIOUSLY BOTH !
ITS not imo incompetence. ITS flat out what they’ve tried to engineer.
Corporate Greed is the new Race Card…. same **** different lie.
If the democrats were as good a carding their voter Identifications as they are pasing out their race cards this election would already be over. Trump wins.
Democrats (morons all), it’s really very simple. The way to deal with “corporate greed” is competition between corporations. It’s not complicated, it’s human nature. The democrats cannot be stupid enough to buy into this government power grab. Harris appeals to the most ignorant segment of society, and I guess we will find out just how ignorant society is.
When it comes to corporate greed competing for dollars with Democrat party greed, the Democrats come out on top every time. Unlike Corporations who cannot illegally import foreign people and customers to increase their customer base and sales, when the Democrats need more money and votes from the government socially dependent children in adult bodies, they just open up the borders to increase the American poverty level that successful corporations have offered jobs and financial independence to, which may make them the enemies of the vote deprived corrupt democrats, but the real friends and neighbors and new back bone of American economic success. For every successful American citizen who achieves the ability to SELF-Govern and vote patriotic conservative, which deprives the Dems of votes, they must either economically destroy achievement self-governing citizens from within with socialist mind manipulations of entitlement, or illegally import from without, enough foreign poverty and like crime mentality entitlement people to refill the ranks of their rank Democrat party political armies of darkness. Corporations don’t pay taxes, they just raise prices and it’s “Hello Inflation” supposedly followed by “Goodbye incompetent greedy Democrats” who are media masters of placing the blame on others.
speedle “The democrats cannot be stupid enough to buy into this government power grab.”
Oh YES, Democrats are stupid enough!
If only Democrats were just ignorant and never been taught the truth they could be brought to their senses. But having received the truth and refused to believe it they ,by their own misguided will power prove themselves to be outright stupid. Any government program that takes from the intelligent honest and gives to they the obstinate stupid will be embraced by them with a joyful mouth and a sad sack ending, like our recently sacked Democrat President.
“The democrats cannot be stupid enough to buy into this government power grab.”
Look at ’em cheering! They elected Barry Seotoro, twice, and claim to have elected Joe Biden.
Especially the mindless view watching crowd.
These higher prices are the result of gubment mistakes – which we know are a deliberate (look at the revision of employment data that was issued this week by the Bureau of Lying Shoots) and a daily occurrence. Also grocery stores operate on a very small margin – 1% to 2% and an average of 1.6%. Where is the corporate greed there Camela?
It’s the dream of all socialists to put businesses under government control. What better way to control the people than by controlling the goods and services they consume.
Exactly. Control the tools folks need to live, and YOU CONTROL THE PEOPLE.