The Star: April 20, 2023

The Star Thursday April 20 2023
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NEWS
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
Cost of food: ‘I love fresh veges but
• By Jean Edwards
CASH-STRAPPED shoppers
are giving up on buying fresh
fruit, vegetables and meat, while
parents struggle to afford healthy
food to fill kindergarten and
school lunchboxes.
Stats NZ figures released on
Monday showed food prices
jumped 12.1 percent in March –
compared to the same time last
year – the biggest annual increase
in more than 30 years.
Christchurch mother-of-two
Jenna Berry said the “ridiculous”
cost of fresh produce had forced
her to make meal-time sacrifices
so her children ate well.
“I’m a solo mum with two kids
and I struggle. I actually cut my
meal size down so they get decent
meals,” she said.
Berry said she made savings by
buying meat in bulk, shopping at
local fruit and vegetables stores
and eating home-grown produce,
but it was becoming increasingly
difficult to pack healthy lunches
for her children.
“My kids’ kindergarten, the
school, they’re really strict on
the food you can put in their
lunchboxes, but the food they
want us to put in is so expensive
you tend to go for your cheap,
crap foods, sugary stuff like that
because it is cheaper,” she said.
“They will literally turn around
COST: Olivia Bovey says she cannot afford fresh vegetables. PHOTO: JEAN EDWARDS/RNZ
and tell the kids, you can’t eat
that at kindy, it’s a home treat.
Then I’ve got my kids who come
home starving because they’re
not allowed to eat that food at
kindy.”
The Stats NZ Food Price Index
shows grocery food prices shot
up 14 per cent year on year,
driven by prices for eggs, potato
chips and yoghurt six-packs.
Fruit and vegetable prices
soared by 22 per cent, driven by
tomatoes, potatoes and avocados.
Christchurch shopper Olivia
Bovey said grocery price hikes
meant she and her partner could
not afford to eat fresh fruit and
vegetables.
“We have to get frozen food,
or we just eat fatty food. I love
fresh veges, but I just can’t afford
them. They really need to put
prices down on veges, it’s crazy,”
she said.
“Sometimes I have to go to the
food bank because I can’t afford
to go to the supermarket.”
Bovey said she only ate meat
when she won $50 packs in
Thursday night pub raffles and
takeaways were sometimes
cheaper than cooking at
home.
Many argue supermarket
profiteering is driving food
price rises, while others point to
suppliers’ increased production
costs and bad weather ruining
crops.
Cyclone Gabrielle’s devastation
has resulted in short supply and
HAVE YOUR SAY: Tell us
your solution to rising
vegetable and fruit prices.
Email barry@starmedia.
kiwi
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high prices for kūmara, which
costs about $11 per
kilogram -
more than
double the
price this time
last year.
Dargaville
kūmara grower
Andre de Bruin spoke
to RNZ from the middle
of harvesting a paddock
with underground flooddamage.
“Somewhere between 20 to 25
per cent of our normal tonnage
will be coming off that particular
paddock. Each paddock we’re
going to varies, but we’ve had
nothing so far that’s any more
than about 30 per cent,” he said.
“This is not a normal harvest. I
would call this a salvage job.”
De Bruin said it was unclear
how much kūmara would handle
winter storage because some of
the crop could rot.
Kūmara would be thin on the
ground until next February,
he said.
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