Snake Harrington mostly takes the bus now and drives only when he can’t avoid it. Simone Coker rides her bike instead of driving her Jeep Liberty, and Peter Dixon hunts for the cheapest gas station.
Theirs are the local faces of the global energy and food crises.
According to OregonGasPrices.com, the past year has seen the average gallon of regular gas in Oregon rise from $3.249 to $3.666. From April 8th to April 26th, the average price has risen by 24 cents.
OregonGasPrices.com is one of 180 area gas price Web sites run by GasBuddy.com, and the site’s co-founder Jason Towes has been monitoring gas prices in the United States and Canada for seven years. Towes said the recent leap in gas prices in the past month has been the steepest since prices boomed after Hurricane Katrina in September 2005.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS, a government agency that compiles economic data, reported that gasoline prices have jumped by 10 percent every year since 2002 in Portland and Salem, which is the closest region to Eugene the BLS studies.
Because of China and India’s new industrial power, and because more and more Chinese and Indians are buying cars, the global appetite for an increasingly restricted supply of oil is becoming greater and greater, Towes said. He said he sees gas rising to six dollars a gallon in the next couple of years.
“It’s pretty crazy times,” Towes said. “And it’s only going to get worse.”
University student Taylor Waind has put an end to his monthly drives home to Portland because of the price of gas. But he’s also been noticing a higher number at the end of his Market of Choice receipt.
“It’s a subtle increase all the time,” he said.
The BLS statistics for Portland-Salem mirror Waind’s at-the-register observations – food prices rose 3.4 percent in 2007, and according to the Oregon Food Bank, they’re continuing to rise.
It’s an old aphorism that inflation hurts the poorest worst, and the current weakening of the dollar and rise in the cost of basic commodities is no exception.
The OFB is the central hub that distributes donated food to 20 regional food banks, like FOOD for Lane County, which then send the food to local pick-up spots like pantries and soup kitchens, said OFB spokeswoman Jean Kempe-Ware. Last year, the organization dispersed 56 million pounds of free food in Oregon and Clark County, Wash., which is across the Columbia from Portland.
In an OFB meeting last week, Kempe-Ware said each of the regional food banks reported significant increases in hungry people looking for help.
The rise in food prices most hurts the people who are “already living on the edge,” Kempe-Ware said. “They’ve already made the cuts they can.” Relying on OFB food is “the only choice they have,” she said.
At the same time demand is rising, supply is dwindling for OFB. The price of a case of flour has risen 39 percent since last July, and a case of macaroni and cheese has jumped 86 percent.
“Every part of the system is being affected,” Kempe-Ware said.
With demand for food rising, the food industry – the source of 65 percent of OFB’s donations – has less to give. Dented cans that used to go to OFB now go to dollar stores, she said.
Because of a successful food drive last fall when “our shelves are empty,” Kempe-Ware said the shelves were now “pretty full,” and the OFB has enough food to last through May. And although the Bush administration has threatened to veto it, Congress has reached a tentative deal on a five-year, $300 billion farm bill, which would include a $1 billion increase for nutrition programs like food stamps, The New York Times reported Saturday.
But the problem of increased demand for less food is likely to stay a problem, Kempe-Ware said.
Because more and more people in China and India are moving out of poverty and are able to eat more than one meal per day, because of climate change and because of high crop prices due to ethanol production, Kempe-Ware said “the cost of food is going to go up, and it’s going to stay up.”
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