Bigmista
somebody shut me the fark up.
From the Wells Fargo Advantage Funds Newsletter:
If gasoline prices have you worried, consider this solution. Drive less and grill more. Haven't you noticed? Meat prices are falling. Instead of burning gasoline at $3.00 a gallon on the way to a restaurant on Saturday night, pick up a good London broil at $3.00 a pound and burn a little charcoal. According to the Livestock Information Center, beef and pork prices are at three-year lows and chicken prices are at four-year lows.
Part of the problem is the scary news reporting about those meat-born diseases – avian flu and mad cow disease. Both illnesses have cut significantly into U.S. exports of chicken and beef. This week both Tyson Foods and Pilgrim's Pride reported quarterly losses and blamed fears of disease for part of their losses. In my local market, chicken legs (great on the grill!) were selling recently for 25 cents a pound. Hey, that's $2 a gallon for chicken, or $1 a gallon less than gasoline. (Can I put a chicken in my tank?)
But it's not just looney livestock and chickens that flu the coop that are causing prices to fall. That wouldn't explain why pork prices are also coming down. There's another force at work: We're not eating as much meat as we did a few years ago when high protein diets were the rage. But meat production continues to expand. The Agriculture Department estimates that U.S. beef production will be up 5% this year, pork production will be up 3%, and chicken production will be up 2%. Says one Wall Street analyst: "There's too much meat. We're just producing too much of it." So prices will fall until demand picks up. It's the law of supply and demand, and it works on gasoline, too. Gasoline prices will fall when we stop using so much. And isn't it curious how we take insult when prices rise and how we take it for granted when they fall.
Possible headlines for this story:
"How to Get More Mileage Out of Your Food Budget"
"From Car Grill to Char Grill"
"Don't Burn Gas (and Try Not to Burn the Meat)"
"From 'Cut Out the Meat' to 'Out to Get a Cut of Meat'"
"The Law of Supply and Da Meat"
If gasoline prices have you worried, consider this solution. Drive less and grill more. Haven't you noticed? Meat prices are falling. Instead of burning gasoline at $3.00 a gallon on the way to a restaurant on Saturday night, pick up a good London broil at $3.00 a pound and burn a little charcoal. According to the Livestock Information Center, beef and pork prices are at three-year lows and chicken prices are at four-year lows.
Part of the problem is the scary news reporting about those meat-born diseases – avian flu and mad cow disease. Both illnesses have cut significantly into U.S. exports of chicken and beef. This week both Tyson Foods and Pilgrim's Pride reported quarterly losses and blamed fears of disease for part of their losses. In my local market, chicken legs (great on the grill!) were selling recently for 25 cents a pound. Hey, that's $2 a gallon for chicken, or $1 a gallon less than gasoline. (Can I put a chicken in my tank?)
But it's not just looney livestock and chickens that flu the coop that are causing prices to fall. That wouldn't explain why pork prices are also coming down. There's another force at work: We're not eating as much meat as we did a few years ago when high protein diets were the rage. But meat production continues to expand. The Agriculture Department estimates that U.S. beef production will be up 5% this year, pork production will be up 3%, and chicken production will be up 2%. Says one Wall Street analyst: "There's too much meat. We're just producing too much of it." So prices will fall until demand picks up. It's the law of supply and demand, and it works on gasoline, too. Gasoline prices will fall when we stop using so much. And isn't it curious how we take insult when prices rise and how we take it for granted when they fall.
Possible headlines for this story:
"How to Get More Mileage Out of Your Food Budget"
"From Car Grill to Char Grill"
"Don't Burn Gas (and Try Not to Burn the Meat)"
"From 'Cut Out the Meat' to 'Out to Get a Cut of Meat'"
"The Law of Supply and Da Meat"
