Cash crunch: Rising food prices impacting local shopping habits

FREDERICTON -

Shoppers and food banks in Fredericton are continuing to struggle with rising food prices.

Debra Caterini of Fredericton says she has had changed her habits when shopping for food recently.

"Prices are crazy, they're through the roof, everything is very expensive, you have to buy though, so it is what it is,” said Caterini. “I definitely have changed, I am more careful about what I buy for sure, and I don't buy stuff that I know I'm not going to, or I may not, use or whatever. Before I would buy stuff and say its okay, but now I'm a lot more careful.”

Alex Boyd the CEO of Greener Village Foodbank, is well versed in food prices. They serve over 1,500 families in the Fredericton region.

“The big things that we buy, especially the fresh stuff milk, eggs, produce, those have all gone up significantly in the last year, double digit percentages but some 20 per cent or more,” said Boyd.

There is not a single item they're buying now, for the same price that it would have been 12 months ago, explains Boyd.

Experts say, hope could be on the horizon.

"We do think a grocery code of conduct will have a calming affect on the industry and could possibly help in terms of moderating some of the tensions that go on in the industry,” said Gary Sands, Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers.

CEOs of Canada’s biggest grocery chains faced questioning in Ottawa this week about steep profits and food inflation, but they denied that corporate earnings were behind rising food prices.

Seeing CEOs of major grocery corporations say they're not profiting from grocery prices is frustrating for the local foodbank knowing that their client rate is up 40% year over year.

"It makes it hard of course we want to imagine that people aren't trying to cause people a hard time,” said Boyd. “So we take them at that face value and for us we say what do we need to do to meet the need.”