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AGENCY TESTIMONY
Causes of rising food prices
0:25:10
ยท
159 sec
Kate MacKenzie explains the complex factors contributing to rising food prices in New York City and beyond.
- Lists various system shocks affecting food prices, including terrorism, hurricanes, and global conflicts
- Highlights the impact of climate change and extreme weather events on food production and distribution
- Mentions labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and inflationary costs as contributing factors
- Explains the limited ability of city policies to address primary drivers of price volatility
- Notes the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection's authority to enforce against price gouging during emergencies
Kate MacKenzie
0:25:10
With this understanding of the city's food system and our infrastructure, I'm now very briefly going to address some of the causes of rising food prices, their impacts on city agencies, and how the city can help New Yorkers stretch their food budgets.
0:25:24
The rise in food prices that we've seen is a complex issue that involves a mix of domestic and global factors.
0:25:32
In the last two decades, there have been food system shocks affecting food prices and supply volatility from terrorism, notably nine eleven, hurricanes in particular for us, Irene and Sandy, the COVID nineteen pandemic, overall global conflict, and now trade tariffs.
0:25:51
Drought, avian flu, and access to undocumented labor are contributing factors to these increases as well.
0:25:59
Climate change and extreme weather events pose additional challenges to the affordability by impacting food production, storage, and distribution.
0:26:09
Increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather conditions can both raise production costs for farmers for things like irrigation, their pesticides, and fertilizers, yet reduce their crop yields.
0:26:22
Extreme weather events can disrupt food distribution networks and further limit the supply of fresh and available produce, all of which lead to a higher food cost borne by New Yorkers.
0:26:33
Food prices are influenced by ripple effects from these shocks, including labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and inflationary costs impacting every single stage of food supply chains.
0:26:47
It's often not just one factor, but a combination of factors that pushes food prices higher over time.
0:26:54
Generally, city policy and programs cannot address the primary drivers for price volatility which besides the larger system shocks are also influenced by the production and manufacturing decisions of supply chain actors, consumer demand, and by the speculation in financial markets.
0:27:12
At the city level, we do not have the ability to mitigate the impact of these costs with the exception of the authority held by the Department of Consumer and Worker Protections during states of emergency to enforce against price gouging.
0:27:27
DCWP's ability to address price gouging complaints applies to a subset of products that are deemed essential such as milk, eggs, bread, and most recently baby formula.
0:27:38
Nonetheless, policy and programs that improve efficiency, expand storage capacity like I've described, and provide alternative distribution channels can have a price mitigating effect.