When will food prices in Denmark return to normal?
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Loading... - Anna Pedersen
- 12 May 2022
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As well as electricity, petrol and gas, the price of food has climbed markedly in Denmark over the last 12 months.
Official data released earlier this week put inflation at its highest level for nearly 40 years, and supermarkets have increased prices on large numbers of products.
Food and energy prices rocket as Danish inflation hits 40-year high
Specific items like chicken and beef are reported to be undergoing drastic price increases, due in part to the increased cost of feed related to global supply disruptions and high energy costs.
According to Statistics Denmark, the price of food products has increased by 7.7 percent during the last year. That takes into account all products, with some therefore undergoing steeper increases than the average. Increases of over 15 percent were recorded for several products including milk, beef and pasta products.
The high price of food in Denmark could be here for the intermediate future – with two years a likely duration according to the sector director for food with the Confederation of Danish Industry (Dansk Industri, DI), Leif Nielsen.
“There are some completely natural things (causing the price rises) such as droughts in several parts of the world. That has given less production than we have been used to,” Nielsen told news wire Ritzau.
“There are also some political reasons. There is a war in Ukraine. That’s a huge agricultural country. They have not been able to export,” he said.
“Additionally, Ukraine has not been properly sowed. There will therefore be less seed and sunflower oil on the market next year,” he said.
Prior to the war, Ukraine, which had a population of 44 million, produced enough seed for 100 million according to Nielsen. That production has been roughly halved, the analyst said.
Meanwhile, some countries have taken the step of restricting exports in order to protect themselves from global prices increases.
For example, Hungary and Indonesia, which produce more wheat and sunflower oil respectively than they use, have limited or stopped exports to prevent competition. They thereby protect their own populations from inflation on those products.
“In return, prices increase in the rest of the world,” Nielsen said.
Drought, war, a loss of harvest in Ukraine and reduced trade are all factors which can draw out the path back to “normal” prices, he said.
“We probably need two or three years. That’s the experience from other crises,” he said. Read More...
