Just last fall, three 35-pound cartons of canola oil, used for deep frying, cost $66.
Today, they are up to $103.50.
‘It’s crazy,? said Joanne King, who along with her husband David, owns Frosty Boy, 955 S. Ortonville Road. ‘It started in the fall’they warned us last year our supplies are going up in price. We’re a small seasonal business, we’re trying not to increase prices too much, but it’s tough right now.?
King and other business owners are contending with skyrocketing grain prices pushing up the costs of a variety of food products from soybean oil to flour to hotdog buns.
Michigan State University Professor James Hilker, of the Department of Agriculture, Food, and Resource Economics, said several factors have pushed grain product prices higher.
‘Farmers are switching from growing wheat and soybeans to growing corn to make ethanol. Both use the same acres,? said Hilker. ‘These prices started jumping in 2006, and for the past two years the world wheat crop has been much lower. Prime growing areas like Kansas had a drought in 2006, then too much rain last year. Europe had two bad years and Australia is recovering from two natural disasters’all this spells not a lot of extra grain.?
‘The grain prices are going to settle down, but not to where it was. Prices were too low to start with,? added Hilker. ‘I look for some moderation over the next two years’but we can’t afford another bad world crop. Consumers are really going to feel it if we have another crop failure.?
But any kind of price moderation is not going to come soon enough for Joe D’Anna, owner of Papa Bella’s Pizza, 430 Mill St., Ortonville.
‘The flour prices are unreal,? said D’Anna, a local pizza maker for more than 35 years. ‘The prices started going up about one year ago’and they never stopped.?
D’Anna said he needs about 16 to 20 50-pound bags of flour each week for his pizza business. Last year, the cost jumped from $10.40 to $30.65 per bag.
‘Our supplier said it could go as high as $40 for 50 pounds this spring. You just have to take it on the chin,? he said. ‘We made 20 percent less profits last year’up the price any more and your customers will suffer from sticker shock,? D’Anna said. ‘It’s a bad pun’but we just can’t keep eating the losses.?