It's hard to boycott the price gouging bastards when it's just 3 companies owning the entire market of what you literally need to buy every week to live.

The best I can do is make maximum use of my local farmer's market but it's closed for the season now. Which is a bummer because not only it was cheaper, but the produce was fresher and of higher quality.

Yes, Loblaws, Sobeys and gang are gouging everyone.

But climate change is a big factor in rising food prices too.

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

Orange juice? Disease due to climate change.

Coffee prices rising right now? Take a guess.

It's only beginning.

How bad do you guys have it over in Canada in terms of cost of living crisis?

I manage a produce department of an IGA, and for years I've had the freedom to order produce from cheaper third-parties to keep my prices low. I have always maintained a 99¢ /lb. to $1.99 /lb. maximum sale price on bulk apples, but just recently Sobeys (our parent company) forced our largest third-party supplier to become an "official ordering partner" and to match all of their costing or lose our business. Now those third-parties are pointless to order from unless I am shorted a bunch of produce from our warehouse. And my apples? $2.49 /lb. to $4.99 /lb., depending on the variety. An absolute fucking joke.

We should have public run grocery chains. These companies are scum

Seriously, we should do something as a society. We can't let two companies (there are others, but please) manage all the food distribution in the country, it's just terrible. Can't we pass some legislation or something?

Tough to boycott the lowest-price option in my area. :/

Ugh, I feel this in the USA too. I went to get some groceries the other day - purposely "just picking up a few things." I live in an area where you have to bring your own bags, and I only brought two, so I was careful with my limits.

It was still sticker shock at the register, as my total was between $90-$100 USD. What the actual fuck.

I'm sorry you're all dealing with the same thing north of the border. I also understand if my comment isn't welcome in this community - I'll delete it if so. I just found the meme painfully relatable and wanted to commiserate.

And it's not even gonna taste very good when make it.

Which Canadian chain is better?

Someone in another Lemmy post suggested CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). In essence, you give farmers a down payment for a period of time and in exchange you get share of the harvest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community-supported_agriculture

I was looking at the prices and to get two seasons (Summer and Winter) of both produce and meat would cost $1,500ish a year. I would be pay about $125 a month. Which is less than the almost $200 a month, I pay.

It's definitely something I will be doing in the future.

Man superstore bread used to be perfect but they changed something and now it doesn't have the extra fluffy inside and chewy crust but they change it back I won't care about the price(mostly)

Sobeys isn't any better.

Meanwhile we still have people screaming about the Sunshine list in Ontario, because it stayed at $100,000 while inflation continued to rise. If it stayed true to purpose, it would be closer to $200,000 now.

That problem has a track record from even deeper than the 3-firm collusive oligopoly of distribution. In fact, in the 1970s the Government of Quebec unilaterally decreed criminal charges beyond arbitrary and Pareto-inefficient quota limits of production and sale by a centralist system of ‘licenses’, a result of colluding of the 1922-born Union des Cultivateurs Catholiques (UCC) of Quebec and the Government of Quebec. Under the guise of “management of supply”, those terrorists have made production and sale of agricultural products under Quebec law a criminal offence, and skyrocketed prices of daily basic human needs of food. Example, still in 2025, the Government of Quebec has threatened criminal charges, i.e. penalties, incarceration, and ultimately use of lethal force, on any production and sale of chicken beyond the 22 chicken production licenses total, 12 eggs production licenses total, $24 000 + per cow production licenses, and 3 slaughterhouses total, on the vast expanse of land more vast than Europe under military rule of the fascist racist capitalist selling-the-country(including-their-own-mother)-to-rich-foreigners ‘government’ of Quebec.

Ahh, the smell of food riots in the morning of the 2020’s. Does not seem to have changed much since the 19th century.

About that, a few recommended readings:

“The Conquest of Bread” - Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin “The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time” - Karl Polanyi “The Hidden Repression of the IMF” - Alex Gladstein “La Ferme Impossible” - Dominic Lamontagne “Mutual Aid: a Factor of Evolution” - Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin

In parallel, astute observers of economics and politics of Quebec and Canada have likely noted a similar problem about a similar unilateral decree of ‘licenses’ of production and sales. In opposition of the Canadian parliamentary federation unilateral decree law of 2017, by which cultivation of cannabis has legal standing up to 4 plants per household, the aforementioned government of Quebec has produced a racket of collusive monopoly, breaking entering and gunpoint robbing self-medication peasants, farmers, students, professors, moms, dads, aunties, uncles, etc. with one hand, and selling ‘licenses’ of prodcution and sales in highest-bidder-auction-even-if-you-sang-self-incrimination-about-’187’ing-cops-of-partner-nations-on-multi-million-sales-music-records with another hand.

“Oh, well just apply for a license!” => minimum investment required, a large production facility (e.g. warehouse), i.e. approx. $100k pre-application, then bribe a lottery type attribution system to actually get the Government of Quebec approval to grow therapeutic food plants, sell them, and if you produce more in contravention of the limits the Government approved of you (e.g. CannTrust), you just get a minor $ penalty, in comparison with the productive people producing outside of that dump of officepaperwork waste of natural resources.

In another parallel, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), from the comforts of offices in gomorrah Washington D.C., has an extensive record of lending active genociders trillions of US$ on conditions of ecocidal and inefficient mono-cultures very similar of the gunpoint-slave-labor plantations of the style of Charles Tait of the 1700s.

The bad parts of capitalism and centralist state communism, with scarce democracy in sight beyond words under attack from stacks of dirty paper and gold in shell-corporation hideouts of the style of Panama, Luxembourg, and Fort Knox, Texas.

Welcome to Canada Ey! Bonjour, Hi, and Bye!

Prescription:

Anarchism yesterday, today, as long as needed. Of, for, by local people.

Replacing pigs in sties and maggots in rot.

Since the needs arose, until the needs subside and fade away.

For human rights, for health.

Peace.

Happy Farming :)

Sincerely,

One of numerous mountain bears.