Why your grocery prices are getting tougher to predict

If you look at the numbers, you’ll see that inflation is falling quickly. Grocery prices are falling too, but they’re still well above the overall inflation rate, and that makes prices three or six months down the line much tougher to predict.

Dr. Kelleen Wiseman is the Academic Director of the Master of Food and Resource Economics program at the University of British Columbia, and one of the authors of the Canada’s Food Price Report for 2023. She joins us to discuss what the report tells us about current and future grocery inflation.

“[Production] prices went up, and yes we had a spike in the future prices, then they went down, but our food prices didn’t,” she said, “that means that there is an impact, but not a long-term impact.”

So with food prices no longer so closely indexed to inflation, and climate change and a volatile geopolitical situation only increasing—are we just left to hope for the best, and plan for the worst?

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