Behind the Rising Cost of Food

But events both at home and internationally are conspiring to shake the confidence of eaters. Global famine, war and disaster are no longer so easy to keep from the table.

Let’s consider, for a moment, the chocolate Easter bunny.

The price of chocolate has been rising. Hershey’s recently said it had increased the cost of its products by almost 10 percent.

The cost of fuel is a culprit, but so are the politics of the Ivory Coast, which supplies more cocoa beans to the word than any other country. While Laurent Gbagbo tried to hold onto his presidency, his rival cut off export of the cocoa crop, and prices in the United States hit a 32-year high.

It’s not just chocolate. Coffee, that other daily solace, is rising to levels that might finally slow the specialty coffee juggernaut. Demand for quality beans is growing around the globe, but drought — possibly the result of climate change — is limiting supply.

But say you can live without a $4 cappuccino or even a chocolate bunny. Prices for the most basic staples are also going up. Domestically, wholesale food prices rose 3.9 percent in February, the largest increase on record for one month since 1974.

Fuel costs are to blame, and so is a shift in how the rest of the world eats. The demand for food is up around the globe, driving prices up. The cost of food worldwide rose 37 percent from February 2010 to this year, according to figures compiled by a United Nations organization.

The cost of meat in particular is running high, according to a wholesale price survey by the Agriculture Department. At the retail level, that means that the brisket on the Passover table costs 17 percent more this year than it did last.

Restaurants are feeling the crush of food costs, too. Per Se, the Manhattan restaurant that lives at the very pinnacle of American fine dining, recently raised the cost of its multicourse dinner to $295 from $275. At the other end of the spectrum, the Applebee’s chain expects to raise prices by a little over 2 percent later this year.

Even the simple pleasure of a good bowl of cereal is touched by global policy shifts. Drought hurts crops. And as the United States, China and India push for more biofuels, which require large amounts of corn, there is less grain to feed cattle and make into tortillas or Frosted Flakes.

So food manufacturers are trying to figure out how to break the news to American grocery shoppers that either charging more or offering smaller packages for the same price are the only options, said Gene Grabowski, an executive with Levick Strategic Communications, which works with the food industry. “It’s an acute problem for food manufacturers who have to try to explain this,” he said. “Consumers don’t accept any argument for higher prices.”

Yet there they are, on the holiday table.