In search of some response, the EU parliament has set aside 500 million euros towards a free fruit and vegetables in schools plan.Though it is still pending final approval, the idea is to encourage more consumption of both fruits and vegetables as EU wide most nations’ children consume below the recommended intake for good health.  Besides preventing obescity, consuming for fruits and vegetables is also linked to preventing disease.

Here is how to read your result :

4 or 5 good answers: Congratulations! You’re a catastrophe for your wallet.
The inflation of the food prices is a reality, but don’t let your own habits ake it even worse…
Maybe you should reflect about how to consume in a healthier way, and take more time to choose your diet.

3 or 2 good answers: It seems that you still can make better to save money consuming food. You may need more time to go shopping, but don’t forget how essential it is to eat well, and not only for your health or for environmental reasons. Also because it can help you saving money.

1 or 0 good answers: Too bad… You have nothing to learn about how to buy food reasonably. So, who is really to blame ? Read what follows to explore some more leads :
You don’t agree at all with the results of this test, let us know what you really think !
“To eat or not to eat: that is the question (of ethics)

We always want to find someone to blame for our problems. When we asked Philip Mikos, an agro-economist, who was to blame for the inflation in food prices over the recent years, he answered very spontaneously “Georges Bush!”. Of course, that made us laugh. But the fact is that the Europeans (and probably the most part of the world) want to find who is really to blame.
But shouldn’t we call into question our own responsibility? Don’t the prices increase also because of our behaviour towards food shopping? Indeed, as Marco Zatterin, a journalist, explains it, the prices increase because we do not know how to stop ourselves, we always want more than we can afford. Thus, Marco Zatterin talks about “greed and fear”. We are greedy to get much more than we already have and we are scared of not managing to get it anymore…
Many people accuse Euro of causing the inflation. We cannot deny that this new currency is one of the causes: in France for instance, the price of the “baguette” jumped from 3 Francs (0,45€) to 0,70€ in 2001 and 0,80€ in 2008 and this is only an example! But it is too easy to stop here.
The point is that many people do not behave ethically – and sometimes without even realizing what the matter is. I’m sometimes one of them! Indeed, when I eat a mango in October just because I love it, buy some tomatoes whereas it is not the season anymore but I really want to do a ratatouille, or cook rice for dinner and then realize that my two other housemates cook rice for their meal as well (in two separate pots, of course!). With a bit of organisation, self-restriction and effort, I should manage not to do this kind of things anymore.
The financial crisis of these weeks may derive from such behaviours. Even if the governments do not learn any lessons, I hope that we do.”

A consumer survey of the Federal Statistic office of Germany from 2005 shows that there acutally is an immens divergence between the real index of inflation and the percieved inlation in Germany. In collaboration with the University Freiburg Swiss they watched the market and its prices from 1995 till 2005. For the same time they correlated impressions of Germans about the increase of prices. The result is that there was inflation, especially during the changeover. The inflation was higher than normally, but prices still went up only for 2 percent, Germans felt an increase of 8 to 10,6 percent.

How can that happen? Why did Germans feel that everything got more expensive although it actually did not?

First of all while the change from the original currency to the Euro people were not able to handle their money. There were no references they could take for a comparison. How much are 20 Euros? What can you buy for that amount of money? They needed a time to get used to “think in Euros” and measure prices in Euro. Another point is that in most of the countries after the number of Euros seemed to be smaller because the conversion were like in Germany for example 1:2. So while paying people it felt like that they did not pay enough.Giving 40 German Pfennig as a tip felt like tipping more than with only 20 Euro Cents. With that we miscalculated in daily life.

But there is another explenation, too. Prices acutally got higher in 2001 and 2002, but not all of them. The reason was not only connected with the adoption of the Euro. Production costs for food increased because of a bad season in agriculture. Besides that only specific prices increased. The problem was that it effected the most common things. Additionally to that most people concentrated to buy only things they needed because of the percieved inlfation. Both facts together created a correlation which was recognized most from the people.

With the experiences of all the other 21 coutries which use the Euro, Slowaks should not worry about inflation too much. It probably will turn out to be not higher as normally. They only need to watch closly the prices and try to get a feeling for the Euro as soon as possible.

The average annual food price increase in August 2008 was 7.1%,
according to figures released by the Statistical Office of the
European Communities (Eurostat) last month.
Countries with food price inflation running above this average were
Belgium, Slovenia, Finland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Sweden.
Greece experienced the lowest food price inflation of 4.5% in that period.
Bulgarian consumers, such as twenty-two-year-old Mariya Vasileva, were
among some of the worst affected in the European Union by food price
changes earlier this year.
Food prices rose by 25% in April year-on-year in Bulgaria, according
to statistics from the federal statistical office in Germany.
“It’s not only food, it’s for everything!” exclaimed Vasileva, a
student international business relations resident in Bulgaria.
When Vasileva went to Poland as part of an exchange program before the
food price crisis, she found that prices were twice as expensive as in
Bulgaria. Returning home in September last year, she said that prices
were now much worse at home.
Her regular glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice that used to cost
her 1.50 euros before she left for Poland now costs her 2.50 euros.
Food prices are just one of the inflationary shocks to hit Bulgaria in
the past 18 months. Mariela Baeva, a member of the European Parliament
from Bulgaria, said that inflation rose by about 10-20% in the first
few months after Bulgaria joined the European Union in January last
year.
She said that the country’s combined high inflation and low national
income meant that the purchasing power of Bulgarian citizens was
relatively low.
Inflation figures released last month by Eurostat put Bulgaria’s
annual inflation at 11.8% for August 2008. The prices of food and
non-alcoholic beverages rose by 9.4%.
Baeva added that the Baltic countries had also seen relatively high
inflation in the past year.
Her observation is borne out by Eurostat’s data, which shows that the
countries with the worst annual inflation in August this year were
Latvia (15.6%), Lithuania (12.2%) and Estonia (11.1%). Inflation in
Estonia lags Bulgaria by only 0.7%.
While the price pinch looks high on paper, wage increases have helped
to off-set the impact of price inflation on consumers. In Lithuania,
wages rose by an average of 18% in the second quarter of this year,
according to Eurostat.
However, government-set heating costs are set to rise dramatically by
53% from this month. This price change is expected to have the largest
impact on the poor and middle-classes.
“The prices are growing up every day. I went out for a month in summer
and when I came back the prices were 10% larger,” recalled Latvian
student Inga Varslavova. “You go to the shop and see totally different
prices.”
Twenty-one-year-old Varslavova added that she was “not optimistic”
about the conditions in her country and the impact of inflation on the
poor.
She said that the government was preparing next year’s budget in a
heated environment where social groups, such as the teachers and
police, where threatening to go on strike.
“My country can’t deal with this problem,” she said, adding, “Everyone
is trying to get the bigger part of what is left.”
The story of why food prices spiked six month is a combination of
increasing demand and low supply, according to Philip Mikos, the head
of the Environment and Rural Development Unit in the European
Commission’s DG of Development.
Increased demand for meat in countries such as China caused demand for
cereals, and especially wheat, to climb, he said. Demand grew against
a backdrop of relatively low supply of wheat,  he explained, causing
the world prices of cereals to treble.
Mikos made these comments a workshop on food price inflation as part
of the European Youth Media Days at the European Parliament this
month.
Mikos explained that the supply shortage was aggravated by
restrictions on the use of Genetically Modified Organisms in Europe,
which caused farmers to increase their consumption of wheat for
livestock, and biofuels production in the United States.
Food items that might reflect changes in the world cereals price would
be goods such as bread and dairy products.
Twenty-year-old French law student Jean Massiet said that he had
noticed food prices rise in Paris, where he lives. When asked what
food items grew noticeably more expensive, he said that he found that
the prices of food products, such as butter, milk, pasta and bread had
visibly inflated.
Bread and cereals prices rose by 10.7% on average in Europe from April
2007 to April 2008, according to the statistics from Germany’s federal
statistical office. Prices for milk, cheese and eggs in Europe grew on
average by almost 15% for the same period.
These averages hide differences among member-states: in Bulgaria, the
price of bread and cereals grew by 38%, while it rose by 6.6% in
France. In France, the price of milk, cheese and eggs went up by 11%,
compared to an increase of 26% in Bulgaria.

Tumi Makgetla and Ieva Naujalytė

 On the first of January 2009, Slovakia will be the sixteenth country where the Euro is the official currency. The EU ministers of Finance decided that one Euro will be the equivalent of 30,1260 koruna. A recent poll shows that the majority of the Slovaks is not enthusiastic about the Euro. 65 Percent would rather keep the koruna, because people fear high inflation. According to Slovak Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Jan Hudacky, this fear is unrealistic. He expects the prices to raise, but only because of ‘better credit accessibility, rising incomes and living standard.’ 

Actors and participants are: Inge ter Schure, Pavol Pruzinec, Gustav Brade and Sibylle Schikora behind the camera.

So here’s a rough list of the layers within the Food Price issue:

• Global Demand from the diets of a growing middle class, especially in Asia.
• Biofuels
• Genetically Modified Crops
• Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events
• Commedities Speculation
• Trade and Agricultural Policy
• Economic crisis and the high price of oil

Each of these could be a good jumping off point, from which to investigate and collect data.  Each of these can be a challenge to explain to an audience, but is also essential information into understanding the how and why of food prices.

The European Commission put out the findings of a public opinion survey on animal cloning for food last week.  Not surprisingly, considering European Citizens’ record and experience with issues related to cloning and genetically modified food, the rusult (via euractiv.com) was an overwhelming majority strongly AGAINST cloning animals:

According to the survey, 58% of EU citizens believe that such cloning for food production “should never be justified,” with only 9% of respondents saying they could accept it.