Hey there,
This month I spent an incredible 3 days in Death Valley (Timbisha Shoshone land). Anyone that knows me well knows I spent the 48 hours before the trip reading and watching everything I could about the desert valley to prepare. The two tips that kept recurring in almost every piece of media I consumed were "fill your tank before you enter the park" and "pack as much food as possible". This is good advice. A few years ago, one of the fuel stops in the park was reported to be the most expensive gas station in the country, and one of the saloons we stopped at offers a basket of fish and chips for $24. This makes sense and isn't surprising, of course. Death Valley is remote and the hottest place on Earth for a chunk of the year making it difficult to transport goods in the ways to which we've grown accustomed.
What feels less intuitive and arguably more insidious is yet another year of record high food prices, particularly in the US where grocery prices are 25% higher than they were in 2020. As you'll see below, the rising cost of food is now being more intensely scrutinized at the federal level.
Of course, as climate change worsens, food production and supply grows increasingly unstable. But, the more that large scale grocers lay claim to the impact of that, and the more they pass down the cost to consumer, the more we should wonder what exactly those grocers are doing to mitigate and reduce said impact with their rising profits. They’re not being used to increase worker wages.
Welcome back to Before the Cutting Board, your roundup of food + supply chain hot topics to help keep you up to speed on what’s going down with your food.
Let’s dig in.
-This Month-
FTC v. Kroger and Albertsons
Naturally, the day I sent out a round-up for the first time in a year was the same day that the US Federal Trade Commission sued to block the Kroger-Albertsons merger. The news of the FTC move confirmed that the US government agrees that the $25B proposed merger could further monopolize an increasingly consolidated food retail landscape. Joining the FTC in the lawsuit are attorneys general from eight states and DC.
Typically, the FTC reserves scrutiny to how anti-competitiveness in mergers affects consumers. The agency believes that the merger would result in higher prices for consumers, lower wages for workers, and lower quality product on the shelves. This lawsuit interestingly marks a new moment for the FTC in which they're recognizing that the merger could cause harm to both grocery shoppers and workers.
Krogers and Albertsons had attempted to appease the agency by promising to sell 413 stores. The FTC wasn't impressed with the effort though, making it clear that the regulators don't see a divestiture as an effective way to reduce the harm that would ultimately be caused by the merger.
[For a quick refresh on when the merger proposal was first announced, take a look at the archive]
The FTC is on a roll
Last week, the agency released a report calling out large grocery retailers for taking advantage of pandemic supply chain disruptions to raise prices more than necessary "at the expense of their competitors and the communities that they serve". The report notes that revenue and cost comparisons negate claims that large retailer prices are simply in line with higher costs.
Here's the full report.
Non, merci
In case you were wondering if consumers and workers are at odds with their grocery stores everywhere in the world, you may find an answer on the Today Explained episode, "Why are groceries still so expensive?” The podcast covers the move from France's big grocer Carrefour to drop brands that insist on unjustifiably high prices.
What else I'm reading and listening to:
Water levels at the Colorado River are so low that the river mouth is a salt flat. More than half of the water from the over-allocated river is used to keep livestock agriculture afloat as drought continues to put water availability at a decline.
The state of New York is suing the world’s largest meat company.
An investigative piece from Civil Eats that serves as a reminder of how powerful food and agricultural lobbies have grown.
The news of the tragic bridge collapse in Baltimore led me to get curious about how to understand the impact of the gigantic cargo ships that keep our global economy afloat, even as the political and ecological conditions for the terms of their existence grow increasingly precarious.
That’s it for this month. If you enjoyed reading this, please forward to a friend. Even if you didn’t enjoy reading it, still tell your friends - misery loves company :)