Soaring Wheat Prices Send Italian Pasta Costs Up
Pastor Dale Morgan
Sep 13, 8:41 PM EDT
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Soaring Wheat Prices Send Italian Pasta Costs Up*
By COLLEEN BARRY
Associated Press Writer
MILAN, Italy (AP) -- Consumer groups urged Italians to refrain from
buying pasta Thursday to protest rising prices for the beloved Italian
staple, in a strike that was high on symbolic value but apparently low
on real impact.
Consumer groups organized protests in Rome, Milan and Palermo - and even
handed out free pasta, bread and milk to passers-by to help ease the
pain for those who decided to support the strike and forego pasta
purchases at supermarkets and restaurants.
Activists say Italians will soon be paying up to 20 percent more for
their daily serving of fettuccine, spaghetti or linguine. They say
prices are being driven up by middlemen, while earnings for farmers and
producers remain flat.
"Prices increase by five times between production and consumption," Toni
De Amicis, a leader of Italian farm lobby Coldiretti, said during a
protest in Rome. "The right recipe is to reduce the gap between
production and consumption."
Similar charges have been lodged in France, where shoppers are grumbling
that their aromatic baguettes will soon cost more because of rising
flour prices. A consumer group warned in August of likely bread price
increases of about 8 percent.
The warning prompted accusations that supermarket chains were
disproportionately hiking prices on breads, as producers noted that the
price of flour only represents 5 percent of the total price of bread.
On average across France, the price of bread rose 1.1 percent in August,
according to the statistics agency INSEE. A crusty long loaf costs about
97 cents.
The EU's Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, meanwhile,
called for increased production of crops like wheat, oats and barley to
counter widespread cereal shortages on the world market that have been
blamed for rising commodity prices.
Boel urged EU governments to back a plan allowing grain farmers across
the 27-nation bloc to plant crops on all their fields. Under rules from
1992 designed to prevent overproduction and to preserve habitats, all
farmers are barred from planting on 10 percent of their total crop field
holdings.
Fischer Boel has recommended the rule be put on hold for a year, to fill
shortages of cereals on the world market.
The impact of Thursday's pasta strike seemed more symbolic, since
shoppers typically stock up on their pasta, buying multiple packages at
a time to always have it at hand. Few shoppers or diners seemed to give
it much notice at all.
"I wasn't aware of the strike, but I do know about the expensive
prices," said 34-year-old Emanuela Mafrolla, a consultant and mother
shopping in central Rome. "Pasta is a basic dish. How could I possibly
give it up?"
At a Roman trattoria, a diner who only identified himself as Giovanni
echoed a similar sentiment as he set in to a plate of fettuccine for
lunch. "Today is pasta strike and we eat it anyway!"
At Rome's Rebibbia prison, however, inmates were taking part, refraining
from buying grain products at the prison shop, the ANSA news agency
reported. They were, however, eating pasta and other products provided
to them in the prison cafeteria.
Economists and producers say pasta price hikes are being driven by
increasing wheat prices worldwide. The demand for wheat is the result of
several trends, chiefly an increasing demand for biofuels, which can be
made from wheat, and improved diets in emerging countries where putting
more meat on the table is raising the demand for feed for livestock,
said Francesco Bertolini, an economist at Milan's Bocconi University.
As a result, wheat stocks worldwide are being depleted to their lowest
levels in decades and grain prices are soaring.
Italy produces only about half of the high-protein durum wheat used to
make high-quality pasta and bread; the rest is imported from overseas
markets including the United States, Canada and Ukraine.
Still, even with the projected increases, "There is no dish that costs
less," said Furio Bragagnolo, the vice president of the Italian pasta
manufacturers association. "Whoever decides to strike against pasta will
spend more on whatever they buy instead. A plate of pasta probably costs
less than an apple."
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Associated Press writers Angela Charlton in Paris and Constant Brand in
Brussels, Belgium, contributed to this report.