Top economist's ominous warning as he predicts 'serious food shocks'

• Published date: 29 June 2022
• Author: Emma Nevin
• Publication title: DublinLive (Ireland)

The latest Dublin Economic Monitor published earlier this month showed that "leading indicators for the Capital's economy hint that a recession is an increasingly realistic possibility"

The cost of food is expected to continue to rise, with new CSO figures showing that Ireland has the second most expensive food prizes in the Eurozone, a whopping 17% above the average.

Economist Jim Power spoke on Eamon Dunphy's 'The Stand' podcast and warned that food prices most likely won't be coming down anytime soon.

He said: "I think for reasons of food more than anything else, the inflation rate in this country could easily hit and top 10% in the coming months because I just don't see any of those forces driving food prices improving anytime soon. Obviously a lot depends on what happens in Ukraine but from what we can see at the moment that situation doesn't look to be resolving itself anytime soon.

"Here in Ireland in the year to May, food price inflation was running at 4.5%. That seems pretty tame relative to the headline rate of 7.8% which is primarily driven by various energy costs.

"Within that 4.5%, it is the highest rate of food price inflation that we have seen in at least a couple of decades. Bread is up 8.8%, flour is up 12.1%, meat is up 7.5% and based on what we understand about global forces and particularly important costs like energy, fertiliser and indeed labour costs, it is hard to reach any other conclusion than that food price inflation is really going to become a thing in this country and elsewhere over the coming months.

"The United Nations has warned that 800 million people globally could be seriously, seriously vulnerable to serious food shocks over the next 12 months."

Mr Power said...