US: weather disasters costing shoppers
Prices for certain fruit, veggies soars in stores

Forget about the Grinch or the local grocer. It's Jack Frost and hurricane Katrina that are dampening the joy of Christmas for local food shoppers.
Prices for some fruit and vegetables have doubled or even tripled in the last few weeks, and one local wholesaler/distributor said yesterday the main culprits are the hurricanes which devastated parts of Florida and Texas last fall, and a killer frost that hit southern California and parts of northern Mexico last week.

"So consumers shouldn't be mad at their retail stores and thinking they're trying to make some extra money off them," Greg Behl, president and head buyer for Garden Grove Distributors (1998) Ltd., said in an interview. "It's all the weather."

Behl said the price of broccoli, for example, has soared from $4 US a case to $14 US a case. Cauliflower has jumped from $1.20 to nearly $3 per head, tomatoes have gone from $1.29 to nearly $3 per pound, and strawberries have gone from $1.50 to more than $3 per pound.

Behl said it's not unusual for fruit and vegetable prices to increase by five to 10 cents a pound at this time of the year. But these weather-related disasters have pushed seasonal price hikes to a new level this year, he added.

While it may not be the retailers' fault, that's cold comfort for seniors like Bill and Dorothy Myskiw, who were grocery shopping yesterday afternoon at Cantors grocery store.

Bill Myskiw, who is a retired farmer from Warren, said they'll probably do without some items, like fresh tomatoes, this Christmas. "We'll watch what the prices are, and if it's too expensive we just won't buy it," he added.

Another Cantors customer, Peter Senkow, 77, said he'll also watch prices. But rather than doing without some fruits and vegetables, Senkow said he'll probably buy them anyway because it's Christmas. He'll just shop around first to get the best deal he can.

Senkow said he doesn't mind paying a little more for imported fruit and vegetables if it's going to help the U.S. producers who were hard hit by last fall's hurricanes or by last week's frost.

But Myskiw said he's not convinced bad weather is solely to blame for some price hikes. He said he's paying about twice as much today for a $20 pound bag of flour as he paid two or three years ago, "but grain prices are as low as they were in the 1940s."

"Beef -- it's the same thing," he added. "It's never come down in price," even though there was a surplus earlier this year when the U.S. was still banning imports of Canadian beef. Some local grocery retailers, like Cantors manager Edward Cantor, said they have no choice but to pass on these recent price increases. Cantor said a case of tomatoes that cost him $22 less than three weeks ago cost him $42 this week. And a case of broccoli that was $9 last week was $21 this week.

But like Myskiw, he suspects there are reasons other than bad weather. "It's like that every year. A week or two before Christmas prices go up, and a week or two after Christmas they start coming down," he said.

Munther Zeid, whose family owns and operates three Foodfare stores in Winnipeg, said that's probably what a lot of consumers think, and that's why his family's stores are absorbing some of the recent price increases rather than passing them on to customers.

"I will not raise my prices going into Christmas and have my customers thinking I'm trying to take advantage of them because it's Christmas," he said. "I'd rather lose a little bit and keep my customers happy."

Zeid said if it's any consolation, some of the other fixings for a traditional Christmas dinner -- things like frozen turkeys and hams, potatoes, and fresh cranberries -- haven't increased in price this year. Bread prices also have been stable for the last few months, he added.

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