Are people hoarding wheat products?
Asked by
JLeslie (
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)
May 3rd, 2022
from iPhone
Have you seen any signs of people stocking up on wheat products because of the war in Ukraine?
I’m in the US.
Ukraine produces a lot of wheat, but as far as I know the US produces plenty of wheat to sustain the US. I don’t know if the US imports any wheat from Ukraine, but the reality might not matter as much as perception.
What have you heard or seen? Are you stocking up?
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13 Answers
I’m not but I usually have a bit of a supply anyway, if I see a sale. Last time there was a sale on the store brand of flour for about $1.50, I bought two 5 lb bags of it, so I still have at least one.
I heard something about a shortage of cooking oil, worldwide. I don’t have a supply of that, but I will never, ever fry anything at home. Therefore, the only time I use cooking oil is for baked goods, which I rarely will make.
No, and the US does not have a wheat shortage. There are other parts of the world where it is difficult to get wheat flour, such as Ethiopia which is having its worst drought in 100 years.
If we were going to have a supply problem, it would have shown up two years ago when people were making bread at home during lockdown.
I wonder if a temporary emergency pause on the Conservation Reserve Program (where the US government pays farmers to NOT farm their land) for wheat/corn/sunflower would help offset these shortages?
I have not seen or heard of this in the Northeast. The shelves in the stores seem well stocked. I am not one to hoard anything.
I just bought a couple bags of wheat berries from a farm in the US. It was a reasonable price and I had no wait on it being shipped. Maybe I was just ahead of the curve, but it didn’t seem like a mass hoarding going on. But we Americans are weird. Very faddy. If someone says wheat will be short, many people will rush out to hoard it, even if they have no use for it.
Here (in Germany), there are slight issues with pasta, cooking oil, and flour. The supermarkets tend to limit products to one or two per customer, which seems sensible to me. They did the same for toilet paper during the pandemic hoarding.
I’m not stocking up, because I believe that exacerbates the problem.
Is there any evidence of bread or cereal prices ginning up faster than overall inflation?
I thought about it, but I’ve decided to hoard chocolate instead.
@janbb – If you promise not to bring wheat ;)
@JLoon A gluten-free choc fest is fine with me!
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