Why hasn't the price of meat gone up?
On an earlier post someone asked: Why, with commodity prices so high, hasn't the price of meat gone up? I have two basic answers. 1) Meat, especially if we're talking about meat you buy in the grocery store, is ultimately derived from commodities like corn and soybeans, which are the primary source of animal feed. But there are a lot of steps involved with raising the animals and processing and marketing them. So the price of meat, like most everything else we buy, is mostly made up of labor costs along that chain, not the price of the raw material inputs. This is why we here in rich countries hardly perceive the effects of rising commodity prices (except maybe for gas), but folks in places like Egypt who are living on $2 day can feel the higher price of wheat in a way we just cannot comprehend. 2) There can be a long lag between the time when corn and soybean prices rise and meat prices rise. In fact, in the short run, meat prices can fall because meat producers, sq