No one ever talks about it, but the supermarkets still have a lot of empty shelves.
Is it covid? Poor management causing workers to quit? Who knows. Lots of vegetables that I've never had trouble getting, are suddenly unavailable for the whole month... It's creepy.
The last few years are the tragedy of climate change and no one is really giving a shit. Its like everyone is expecting some kind of full blown apocalyptic event and not just gradual upticks in natural disasters causing gradual increases in shortages and failures of infrastructure. I think we've hit the point of no return in terms of having the luxuries we had pre-2020 bushfires. It fits the timeline of the things I read back in the 90s where they all said by 2020 things would start becoming noticeable. So far its mostly been only small-mid size towns that have been hit hard so everyone in the cities can ignore it, but its a slow decline from here. If we have shortages now with regular natural disasters, imagine how the 2030s/40s/50s are going to look.
I am seeing it in the United States as well. I think it isn't talked about because :stonks-down: but I've seen consistent unmentioned empty shelves in specific parts of the grocery store for months on end... and more shelves are becoming bared over time.
Portions are also smaller as prices are going up. Again, almost no mention anywhere. It's just... happening. :doomer:
Shrinkflation is getting very noticeable. Lots of packaged foods getting smaller and smaller by weight.
Shrinkflation was annoying, when they'd just shrink product but keep the price the same. Fuckers are shrinking AND charging more for it, dopey bourgeois government is just like "no windfall profits tax or price controls" even after they have back to back record profits.
The price for a pound of pasta has more than doubled since the pandemic :(
This is the case even in hospitality. Our suppliers (in NSW) couldn't even get frozen seasoned potato wedges for a month. Ended up having to import from "the Pacific Northwest" in the USA for a hefty markup. Chips (or fries for the yanks) and hash browns have been harder to get too.
Climate change related crop failures are the reason but no-one really gives a shit.
Okay being short of potatoes is legitimately scary. How do you end up short of potatoes?
Potatoes aren't native to Australia so first and foremost the environment isn't suited sometimes.
Secondly capital plays a role. They're frozen then processes, and chips (i.e. french fries) are in higher demand so what surviving crops are turned into those (the ones that don't hit the supermarkets anyway). It wasnt so much an actual shortage as a variety shortage. There was a lack of pre packaged mashed potatoes, hash browns and seasoned wedges. The higher demand was more profitable but that didn't stop people from asking "it's made from the same plant how do have chips but not wedges/hash browns/etc"
Edit: the chip (fries) becoming harder to get was due to a coinciding local tourist event that tripled this town's population for a weekend
supermarket where im staying at the moment seems to always be out of tofu but i blame the vegan agenda stealing it all to sneak it into peoples food and turn them into soyboys
otherwise i honestly havent noticed much missing but maybe i mostly buy weird shit nobody else wants
I haven't seen the only flavor of ramen that doesn't have meat powder in it for over a year.
i get the spicy shin ramen in the big bag of 5 which i think have pretty much always been in stock and are definitely vegan unless i really fucked up, but i also imagine they dont sell them everywhere in the first place
fuck really? i remember i even checked them on an is-it-vegan website
havent eaten them much but fuck
That's what the ingredients say, it's listed as vegetarian on Amazon but then has like beef tallow extract in the ingredients.
i checked on the packet at home and i cant see anything like that anywhere, i can see it has enhancer 631 though which is apparently sometimes/often non-vegan, so guess ill find another sort
I'll take a look the next time I'm at the store, instant ramen are just notorious for using various animal stocks and I usually assume they do.
Yeah Coles had no chips the other day, was honestly shocked. From what i've heard talking to people who talk with farmers the rain and flooding has made planting and harvesting pretty tough and can also just straight up destroy harvests. Mix that with high fertilizer and fuel prices and roads blocked with water and here we are with shortages.
I'm gonna blame it on the floods even though most of those foods seem to be back and restocked regularly. Remember that weird month when you couldn't get spinach or lettuce though, shit was weird you'd go to KFC and get cabbage in your Zinger Burger™
they've replaced the Wicked Wings in the Zinger Box with these small crumbed clumps of boneless pieces too and they're fucking awful; if that's not a sign of how bad things have gotten I don't know what is
you don't tempt fate by depriving tradies of the Zinger Box, it's just asking for trouble
I've noticed this from before the floods, but that's probably part of the reason, yeah.
Shit's going to suck here worse and worse because of climate change, huh?
We are only entering the tunnel of climate change. Also the tunnel doesn't have an end. I picked the wrong metaphor for this, the point is we're only just getting started with how fucked this is gonna be
It was before the current floods, it was just different floods. Rocket (arugula for the yanks) was hard to get due to flooding (and also an introduced species living in Australia). Spinach too, and iceberg lettuce.
I have, it's not like we're lacking staples but overseas and even occasionally interstate produce are getting rarer. I do know that the portion of food exported from AU has sharply risen since it's more profitable to sell it overseas than here.
