As we have talked about in newsletters-past, the Nation's food shortage and price-hikes are still on the rise. We received $1.6k of our $3.2k food order this week. We want to warn folks that the situation is only getting worse and it is highly recommended that shoppers begin planning now for their "must-haves" for their holiday dinner tables.
Here at the Co-0p we have been doing our best to stock up on the essentials, but our orders of stuffing and cranberry sauce (that we pre-ordered back in July) have already been canceled by our distributor. Now the challenge will be filling those voids and in some cases, making more items from scratch for your holiday table.
"Holiday food shopping this year will be more challenging than ever," Phil Lempert, food trends analyst and editor of SupermarketGuru.com. "The perfect storm of climate change, especially the wildfires in the West has destroyed some crops which has driven up the cost of soy and corn feeds for animals, which translated to increased costs for the farmer and therefore the shopper."
The industry continues to face shortages during the pandemic, and those shortages on product and packaging may vary week to week. In some instances, suppliers have discontinued multiple varieties to concentrate on their best selling items to meet demand.
Can't find your favorite canned goods? That may be because the price of aluminum has gone up 40% since last year, increasing prices or making it difficult for manufacturers to budget the cost increase themselves while keeping their products affordable.
What can we do?
Let's try to go as local as possible!! We will obviously have local turkeys available to order from Moose Mtn Farm. We have been contacting our bread bakers to see how many of them would be willing to produce stuffing for the holidays and they all seem interested in gearing up for production in the coming month, as they now know the demand is there. Please let us know if there is something in particular you'd like us to nail down and we will start the hunt now!
Turkeys:
Moose Mountain Farm- Brookfield, NH
Stuffing:
Abigail's Bakery- Weare, NH
Beth's GF Goodies- Wolfeboro, NH
Sunnyfield Brick Oven Bakery- Tamworth, NH
Potatoes and Squashes: possible
Farmer Bell- Alton, NH
Pork Hill Farm- Ossipee, NH
Do you have the inside scoop on some local farms and producers that we could reach out to? Please let us know!