The latest victim of global boiling is peanut butter, one of the most enduringly popular staples of the American diet. The record-hot summer in the southern United States, fueled by global warming pollution, has ravaged peanut crops from Texas to Georgia. The Wall Street Journal reports that “startling price increases” in peanut butter are coming to stores because of the “hot, dry summer”:
Another hot, dry summer has devastated this year’s peanut crop, sending prices for the legume skyrocketing and forcing peanut-butter brands including J.M. Smucker Co.’s Jif, Unilever NV’s Skippy and ConAgra Foods Inc.’s Peter Pan into startling price increases.
Wholesale prices for big-selling Jif are going up 30% starting in November, while Peter Pan will raise prices as much as 24% in a couple weeks. Unilever wouldn’t comment on its pricing plans, but a spokesman for Wegmans Food Markets, the closely held supermarket chain in the Northeast U.S., said wholesale prices for all brands it carries, including Skippy, are 30% to 35% higher than a year ago.
Kraft Foods Inc., which launched Planters peanut butter in June, is raising prices 40% on Oct. 31, a spokeswoman said.
“Only 38% of the U.S. peanut crop was rated good or excellent last month, down from about 60% a year ago,” the Journal reports.
The cost of global warming to America’s farmers — and then to American families at the dinner table — is growing rapidly. However, many of the industry groups and politicians who purport to represent the interests of U.S. agriculture, like the American Farm Bureau and Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), deny the threat of climate change to farmers.