Price of produce may continue to rise due to the low Canadian dollar
Posted February 24, 2015 7:37 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Have you noticed the prices of fresh fruit and vegetables climbing?
Prices are normally higher in the winter when most produce is imported but a low Canadian dollar means they are likely to either climb even further or remain steady.
Record drought in California isn’t helping with that, either.
“The loonie could drop as low as 75 cents on the dollar and if that’s the case, then benefits stemming from a solid harvest may be off-set by the effects of a weaker loonie,” says food science expert Dr. Sylvain Charlebois from the University of Guelph.
Normally, prices would drop again — if even only slightly — in the summer, as crops are harvested here. But the low loonie is likely to offset any drop, no matter how big the harvest may be.
“We are expecting prices to go up. When the currency weakens, prices tend to go up quite rapidly. But there’s lots of discipline out there among food retailers, so price wars are less likely. When prices go up, they rarely go down again,” says Charlebois.
Some experts predict a 75-cent loonie at some point, which Charlebois says will even affect the lowest of the low-price grocery stores.
He tells us that could leave Walmart near the top because of their massive purchasing power.
“Walmart is quite aggressive. They look at prices very closely, every single day. Their store is intentionally unsophisticated so that really drives cost down and they are able to offer prices that are really competitive,” says Charlebois.
