Food Commodity prices rise, Cooking oil not caught up with rising inflation

Grain commodity prices have rise since late last year, one area of the food sector has not caught up with rising inflation, and those are cooking oils.

That may be changing as a recent report shows stockpiles are dwindling, and consumer purchases are rising under the expectation prices will soon be much higher.

Inventories of soybean oil and palm oil, used by Nestle SA and Unilever and in everything from Hellmann?s mayonnaise to Snickers candy bars, will drop 12 percent in the coming year as China and India increase consumption 11 percent, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show. Food prices climbed in September to the highest level since the crisis in 2008 that sparked riots from Haiti to Egypt, the United Nations says.

?China?s economy is growing and there?s no reason why the country will take any less food next week, next month, or next year,? said Steve Nicholson, a commodity procurement specialist at International Food Products Corp., a distributor and adviser on food ingredients in Fenton, Missouri. ?We?ve been able to produce more food in the past 2,000 years, but can we do it fast enough to meet the demand from China and other emerging economies to stave off a crisis??

Floods and drought throughout the world have caused yields in nearly every commodity to be much lower this year than in recent years. Populations have not tapered off, and Asian diets are calling for more and more foodstuffs they wouldn't have eaten in the past.

What can you do as consumers before the prices rise even more?

Recognize the ways you can carry over cooking oils beyond the recommended shelf life. Olive Oil can be used for a lot of cooking, but it has a low smoke point for higher temperature items. Coconut oil is very good for smoke point cooking and has a much longer shelf life than vegetable and grain oils. Palm and peanut oils also are long lasting and have high smoke points,

One thing that has been tested by a reader is the freezing of cooking oil in a sub-zero deep freeze. They reported this worked very well, even for oils long past their printed shelf life.

Butter, which is one of the most common cooking substances, has seen a rise in price this year as well. One reader commented they paid $5.00 for 2 pounds earlier in the year, but are now paying $3.69 for 1 pound.