This is the way, though.

Grow your own = Insanely cheap, very easy, super delicious.

Farmer's market = Cheap, convenient, super delicious and big.variety.

Friends with chickens = Delicious high quality free eggs offloaded onto you every week.

Grocery store = Low quality crap; twice the price. An unpleasant experience of other miserable people and awful music. A chore of a thing to do. The whole layout trying to be themed like a fancy farmer's market but you can't even find the plum vinegar!

100% Agree, I thankfully have a local grocery store close to me so I can avoid the big 3, but this isn't a realistic option for everyone. I'm hesitant to just buy online for things like produce as my experience with them has been mediocre (I haven't tried costco though).

This really isn't a problem the everyday Canadian can fix without the government stepping in and breaking up the monopoly of Loblaws, Sobey's and Metro.

I'd love to see a future Canada where there was more local grocery chains, with the same access to product that the big three have. Also would be great if they were closer to where people lives so people wouldn't feel like the need to drive to get their groceries.

It’s not great.

The median mortgage payment is over 50% of the median income, which historically should be 30%. Houses are over 60%. But the numbers are getting better than their 2023 records highs.

Our biggest grocers were fixing bread prices for over a decade and were only given a slap in the wrist. People can ask for a $20 rebate.

Almost all of our grocery stores are owned by 3 companies (Loblaws, Metro, and Sobeys (made up of former Loblaws employees)). 3 companies own almost all our phone providers, so they gouge prices too.

You can really see a trend — we seem to concentrate all our industries into 3 or so companies and the competition bureau thinks that’s fine. Historically I think that’s because we were a colony and got too used to being exploited and having our wealth shipped off.

Orange juice? Disease due to climate change.

That's very recent.

A more historical look at orange production - particularly in Florida - shows it peaked in the early '00s at 250M boxes, then plunged to 12M boxes thanks to disease, hurricanes, and real estate development.

But the root reason is that orange surpluses were thinning profits. Drastic reduction in production pushed up unit prices without materially increasing costs.

Orange agribusiness is doing fine. It's the retail purchases who are eating shit

Remember olive oil going up in price? Crop failure due to bad weather.

The destruction of historical olive groves has been a major Israeli tool for displacing native Arab peoples.

This isn't just bad weather. It's manufactured poverty through ethnic cleansing.

We're seeing similar events in Central Africa, Ukraine, the Kashmir region of India, and now the US military campaign against Venezuelan fishermen.

Israeli settlers burn Palestinian home, fell olive trees in West Bank

There have been more than 2,400 settler attacks on Palestinian property since October 2023, with over 3,000 displaced.

^{Stephen Quillen (Al Jazeera)}

Same hit in the UK, same hit in Germany.

(With the exception of LIDL, for some reason they understand how to keep prices down)