Boycott Loblaws & Empire!
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Tough to boycott the lowest-price option in my area.

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Yes, Loblaws, Sobeys and gang are gouging everyone.
But climate change is a big factor in rising food prices too.
Remember olive oil going up in price? Crop failure due to bad weather.
Orange juice? Disease due to climate change.
Coffee prices rising right now? Take a guess.
Itās only beginning.
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How bad do you guys have it over in Canada in terms of cost of living crisis?
itās expensive here. Groceries are a crap shoot and if you have the ability to shop mom and pop then thatās your best bet. Thankfully I live in Toronto near an area known as ālittle chinaā so I do all my grocery shopping there and I save an absolute ton. better quality food imo too.
Rent is a crap shoot pretty much every where in the country. youāre not going to find US prices here at all. And if the place you do live is connected via a transit system to a major city then rent is going to be about the same as if you were actually living in said major city. so youāre looking at paying well over $1200 a month for just about everything. anything below that? youāre one lucky bastard.
Everything else is expensive because in Canada thereās very little, if any, competition and thatās by design. like 3 grocery chains, maybe 3 telecom providers that all provide phone, internet, and tv service so they all work together and adjusting their prices. The Canadian government is essentially in the pocket of these companies so you wonāt get competition at all as the government basically wonāt allow it.
Itās been like this for a very long time. Canada is expensive, has always been expensive, and will continue to be expensive because the powers that be want it that way.
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Ugh, I feel this in the USA too. I went to get some groceries the other day - purposely ājust picking up a few things.ā I live in an area where you have to bring your own bags, and I only brought two, so I was careful with my limits.
It was still sticker shock at the register, as my total was between $90-$100 USD. What the actual fuck.
Iām sorry youāre all dealing with the same thing north of the border. I also understand if my comment isnāt welcome in this community - Iāll delete it if so. I just found the meme painfully relatable and wanted to commiserate.
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Itās hard to boycott the price gouging bastards when itās just 3 companies owning the entire market of what you literally need to buy every week to live.
The best I can do is make maximum use of my local farmerās market but itās closed for the season now. Which is a bummer because not only it was cheaper, but the produce was fresher and of higher quality.
My parents have had decent success packaging and freezing some farm stand stuff for later.
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Tough to boycott the lowest-price option in my area.

Iām genuinely curious: have you looked into co ops in your area? Some deliver!
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My parents have had decent success packaging and freezing some farm stand stuff for later.
Your folks have the right idea! Iāll add that canning certain things is also a great skill to learn
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Ugh, I feel this in the USA too. I went to get some groceries the other day - purposely ājust picking up a few things.ā I live in an area where you have to bring your own bags, and I only brought two, so I was careful with my limits.
It was still sticker shock at the register, as my total was between $90-$100 USD. What the actual fuck.
Iām sorry youāre all dealing with the same thing north of the border. I also understand if my comment isnāt welcome in this community - Iāll delete it if so. I just found the meme painfully relatable and wanted to commiserate.
Americanās are still welcome to Canada, just leave the MAGA bullshit at the door. Weāre still sibling states. Even though our older brother is increasingly hateful and violent, youāre still our brother. Weāre worried about you. We wonāt tolerate any of your abuse though.
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Ugh, I feel this in the USA too. I went to get some groceries the other day - purposely ājust picking up a few things.ā I live in an area where you have to bring your own bags, and I only brought two, so I was careful with my limits.
It was still sticker shock at the register, as my total was between $90-$100 USD. What the actual fuck.
Iām sorry youāre all dealing with the same thing north of the border. I also understand if my comment isnāt welcome in this community - Iāll delete it if so. I just found the meme painfully relatable and wanted to commiserate.
Same hit in the UK, same hit in Germany.
(With the exception of LIDL, for some reason they understand how to keep prices down)
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Americanās are still welcome to Canada, just leave the MAGA bullshit at the door. Weāre still sibling states. Even though our older brother is increasingly hateful and violent, youāre still our brother. Weāre worried about you. We wonāt tolerate any of your abuse though.
I love Canada, wish I could move there lol
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Grow your own = Insanely cheap, very easy, super delicious.
Not going to be anywhere near enough food for one person unless you have more land available for yourself than people in a city or even most modern suburban developments are likely to have. Also takes a lot of time and effort if you want more than the occasional tomato, cucumber, lettuce head or zucchini to enrich your diet a bit. (Can be fun on a small scale, though.)
Farmerās market = Cheap, convenient, super delicious and big.variety.
Nice, but takes a lot of planning, storage and home cooking to work out. You may need to start planning your life around when the farmerās markets are and what they carry. Also, the variety is necessarily limited to what farmers in your area are growing.
Friends with chickens = Delicious high quality free eggs offloaded onto you every week.
Cool if you got those, but most people donāt.
Land available isnāt true at all. A sunny windowsill could provide a family with herbs, leafy greens or something like tomatoes. Check out the kratky method for a pretty cheap introduction to hydroponics
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I manage a produce department of an IGA, and for years Iāve had the freedom to order produce from cheaper third-parties to keep my prices low. I have always maintained a 99Ā¢ /lb. to $1.99 /lb. maximum sale price on bulk apples, but just recently Sobeys (our parent company) forced our largest third-party supplier to become an āofficial ordering partnerā and to match all of their costing or lose our business. Now those third-parties are pointless to order from unless I am shorted a bunch of produce from our warehouse. And my apples? $2.49 /lb. to $4.99 /lb., depending on the variety. An absolute fucking joke.
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Yes, Loblaws, Sobeys and gang are gouging everyone.
But climate change is a big factor in rising food prices too.
Remember olive oil going up in price? Crop failure due to bad weather.
Orange juice? Disease due to climate change.
Coffee prices rising right now? Take a guess.
Itās only beginning.
Orange juice? Disease due to climate change.
Thatās very recent.
A more historical look at orange production - particularly in Florida - shows it peaked in the early '00s at 250M boxes, then plunged to 12M boxes thanks to disease, hurricanes, and real estate development.
But the root reason is that orange surpluses were thinning profits. Drastic reduction in production pushed up unit prices without materially increasing costs.
Orange agribusiness is doing fine. Itās the retail purchases who are eating shit
Remember olive oil going up in price? Crop failure due to bad weather.
The destruction of historical olive groves has been a major Israeli tool for displacing native Arab peoples.
This isnāt just bad weather. Itās manufactured poverty through ethnic cleansing.
Weāre seeing similar events in Central Africa, Ukraine, the Kashmir region of India, and now the US military campaign against Venezuelan fishermen.
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Orange juice? Disease due to climate change.
Thatās very recent.
A more historical look at orange production - particularly in Florida - shows it peaked in the early '00s at 250M boxes, then plunged to 12M boxes thanks to disease, hurricanes, and real estate development.
But the root reason is that orange surpluses were thinning profits. Drastic reduction in production pushed up unit prices without materially increasing costs.
Orange agribusiness is doing fine. Itās the retail purchases who are eating shit
Remember olive oil going up in price? Crop failure due to bad weather.
The destruction of historical olive groves has been a major Israeli tool for displacing native Arab peoples.
This isnāt just bad weather. Itās manufactured poverty through ethnic cleansing.
Weāre seeing similar events in Central Africa, Ukraine, the Kashmir region of India, and now the US military campaign against Venezuelan fishermen.
Olive grove destruction in Palestine is a horrible part of the genocide. But not a factor in olive oil price rises in Canada. The stuff we see here is produced in Spain, Italy, Tunisia, Greece etc.
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Ugh, I feel this in the USA too. I went to get some groceries the other day - purposely ājust picking up a few things.ā I live in an area where you have to bring your own bags, and I only brought two, so I was careful with my limits.
It was still sticker shock at the register, as my total was between $90-$100 USD. What the actual fuck.
Iām sorry youāre all dealing with the same thing north of the border. I also understand if my comment isnāt welcome in this community - Iāll delete it if so. I just found the meme painfully relatable and wanted to commiserate.
Youāre welcome. We are upset with the USA, not Americans.
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Someone in another Lemmy post suggested CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). In essence, you give farmers a down payment for a period of time and in exchange you get share of the harvest.
I was looking at the prices and to get two seasons (Summer and Winter) of both produce and meat would cost $1,500ish a year. I would be pay about $125 a month. Which is less than the almost $200 a month, I pay.
Itās definitely something I will be doing in the future.
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Meanwhile we still have people screaming about the Sunshine list in Ontario, because it stayed at $100,000 while inflation continued to rise. If it stayed true to purpose, it would be closer to $200,000 now.
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Grow your own = Insanely cheap, very easy, super delicious.
Not going to be anywhere near enough food for one person unless you have more land available for yourself than people in a city or even most modern suburban developments are likely to have. Also takes a lot of time and effort if you want more than the occasional tomato, cucumber, lettuce head or zucchini to enrich your diet a bit. (Can be fun on a small scale, though.)
Farmerās market = Cheap, convenient, super delicious and big.variety.
Nice, but takes a lot of planning, storage and home cooking to work out. You may need to start planning your life around when the farmerās markets are and what they carry. Also, the variety is necessarily limited to what farmers in your area are growing.
Friends with chickens = Delicious high quality free eggs offloaded onto you every week.
Cool if you got those, but most people donāt.
Not going to be anywhere near enough food for one person unless you have more land available for yourself than people in a city or even most modern suburban developments are likely to have.
i did a study on area needed for food production a while ago, and IIRC
- per person, about 1000 m² are needed to feed them. depends a bit on where you live though
- fertile land produces around 3.5 t of grains /ha on average. with modern technology, the peak is 7.5 t/ha
- by far the most area is needed to grow calorie-heavy foods. like, you could get far with 30 m² for yourself if you only plant vegetables and buy the grains at the supermarket
- grains are really cheap, compared to vegetables. thatās because vegetables are labor-intensive (difficult to automate because theyāre often fragile and sensitive) while grains can be automated on ultra-large-scale farms with farming machines, so theyāre really cheap.
Note: 1 t = 1000 kg, grains = cereals
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This is the way, though.
Grow your own = Insanely cheap, very easy, super delicious.
Farmerās market = Cheap, convenient, super delicious and big.variety.
Friends with chickens = Delicious high quality free eggs offloaded onto you every week.
Grocery store = Low quality crap; twice the price. An unpleasant experience of other miserable people and awful music. A chore of a thing to do. The whole layout trying to be themed like a fancy farmerās market but you canāt even find the plum vinegar!
Farmers markets have never been cheaper where I live. Fresher maybe, but as expensive or more expensive than supermarket produce.
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A bag like that at SuperStore (Canada) for us is around $50, but if I go to the smaller chain (Fruiticana) its like $18⦠Iām always stunned and think they forgot to scan some items