Food prices will be falling

A trip to the grocery store was getting to be like a stop at the gas station a few months ago, but that is all changing. Gas prices have come way down and food prices are following.

The government has reported that the price of goods and services fell in record amounts in October of this year. The fall was all over our nation, more in some places than in others.

Last year I was telling you that the ethanol industry was buying up corn and the like to make ethanol.
The lack of corn left on the market created shortages in many different food products. What this shortage didn’t affect was hit by the overall cost increase in shipping with diesel at record levels.

Now with better fuel prices, corn, wheat, soybeans, etc., are getting used once again as feed and other products.

Remember, I keep telling you that President Bush didn’t want the use of our food and grains to be used to make ethanol. It was the industry that chose to go that route.

With our grain once again returning to their former intended purpose prices should be going down at the grocery store as well.

As a consumer you will like a smaller food bill as much as you like a smaller gas bill, but the farmer is once again not enjoying this as the consumer is.

There are farmers in the Texas Panhandle who have put in their winter wheat crops at a cost to them of about $6 an expected bushel for seed, fertilizer and diesel. The farmer is caught in the middle of planting at inflation prices and harvesting at deflation prices.

Locally, farmers are also faced with one of the all-time worst droughts. Pray for rain, as farmers’ survival and your food bill are at stake.

Father Samuel Heitkamp is pastor of St. Joan of Arc Church in Kirby and was director of the former rural life organization in the archdiocese.