Looming food shortages? Probably not in the U.S. (Politifact)

Politifact published an article stating that as tough as inflation is on families, there is a difference between rising prices and goods being truly unavailable. Americans are likely to experience some problems tied to the war, poorer nations will bear the brunt of the impact. Senior research fellow Joseph Glauber emphasized that what you pay at the grocery store has a slender link to the price of the underlying raw material. “If you look at wheat prices over the last 18 months, they’ve more than doubled,” Glauber said. “But bread prices are up 5% to 6%. This also applies to goods like sunflower and other seed oils that the U.S. imports.” He said these products play a limited role in the American household budget, however. “Vegetable oil is overall, a very small part of food inflation here. It’s about 3% of consumption.” There is a chance that Biden’s plan to increase the use of corn-based ethanol could lead to higher corn prices, but Glauber said the impact of that policy shift is less significant than it might seem.