The article shows that durum wheat prices have increased by more than 50%.

So assuming that the dominant factor in the price of pasta is the price of wheat, the price rise would be more like going from 2-3€/kg to 3-4.5€/kg

Cheap brand pasta are barely more expensive than that (0.7-1.2€/kg), so that sounds like that's the dominant factor at least for some brands.

Apparently in 2008 the price of wheat peaked at twice its current price (https://www.ifcm.co.uk/market-data/commodities-prices/wheat), but the price of pasta hasn’t halved since then.

Probably the imported durum wheat is used for other things, like farina or fodder.

I’m not saying that it will not happen a price increase, a lot of people are saying it also in Italy, but a lot less than the +50%, surely.

Here’s an interview with the CEO of an Italian pasta maker (La Molisiana):

"I know that Lidl has already increased the price of pasta by 10 cents - he adds - and I expect that well before Christmas everyone will expect increases between 15 and 20 cents per package".

Translate it: https://www.leggo.it/alimentazione/news/pasta_allarme_grano_...

durum wheat is "frumento duro".

The price now is 458,00 €/T which quite high.

https://www.ismeamercati.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/IT...

Article suggests pasta price increase may kick in over the next few months.

We already have a lot of prices increase from coffee (from 0,9€ to 1,2€) to a glass of wine (from 1€ to 1,20/30€), and a lot of other Italian typical foods that are hurting us.

Anyway the price of pasta can be already different in Italy, south is cheaper. I hope this would not coming in winter or starting in 2022, but we’ll see what will happen.

(Fortunately we don’t eat pasta at Christmas dinner =] )

At a popular grocery chain, the store brand of pasta is 1,9€/kg, which is the price I'm mentally anchored to ($1/lb).

But Barilla is the equivalent of 3,3€/kg, and that's what I generally buy.

Then there are the specialty or organic brands touted as "premium" or made with "bronze dies" that are like 6€/kg.

I am surprised if it is possible to generalize like you do for coffee and wine. I am used to there being a huge range of prices for any staple.

A thing I am noticing more and more is that the larger containers often have higher unit pricing.

"I know that Lidl has already increased the price of pasta by 10 cents - he adds - and I expect that well before Christmas everyone will expect increases between 15 and 20 cents per package".

https://www.leggo.it/alimentazione/news/pasta_allarme_grano_...

So, it will be noticeable but not impossible to handle, there’re a lot of prices increase in 2021, as I said, pasta is the one we (Italian) care less fortunately because it’s a small increase.

As I said, pasta ranges in price very widely here.

So do coffee and wine.

So I do not know what it means when somebody says coffee costs <X> and wine costs <Y>. How can it be so standardized?

For instance you can say that wine in the UK costs on average 9£ per litre and that cheap wine cost 5-7£ per litre (I’m making up numbers).

But the source here, I believe was from an executive of a pasta factory.

It would be surprising to me if essentially all the pasta in Italy was made by one producer and sold at one price, such that you could talk about trends in fractions of a Euro based on one interview like this.

I'm used to staples being sold at different price points within a grocery store and across different stores or different communities.

Not a range of 40-80% like your sample numbers, but 300% or more.

> Instead I see the inflation rising in the fruit and vegetables prices! There’s a 25-30% increases since the beginning of the 2021.

It's only a matter of time it spreads to the rest of the basket. I guess the pro-MMT folks are hiding now.

From the article, that you obviously didn't bother to read:

"Drought and heat continued to hurt the wheat harvest in July in Canada, the world’s biggest supplier of durum wheat, months after a harsh winter hit the Russian crop. Grain shipments from Western Canadian port terminal elevators tumbled 41% in the third week of August from a year-ago, according to a Quorum Corp. report. European crop quality was also hurt by heavy rains over the summer."

It seems that we better apply some lessons from MMT for a fast transition to green energy soon.

For anyone interested in learning more about MMT :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS9nP-BKa3M

(Presidential Lecture Series: Stephanie Kelton, video)

All of this work/activity is for fiat currency what gold was in the gold standard.

So the ceiling is much higher, but there's still a ceiling - go too high and your currency is in trouble.

Also manage the removal of money properly - too much tax and people are in trouble, which leads to your currency being in trouble.

Can it ever recover if people lose trust in it? Since that's a major part of what's keeping such a system going.

More like get (or enable) people to trade with one another.

> So the ceiling is much higher, but there's still a ceiling - go too high and your currency is in trouble.

I think this is the problem with MMT as it doesn't give an answer to what should you use to store wealth. Money should not be used to store wealth (that's not its goal) but to make a transaction possible between two counter-parties.

> Can it ever recover if people lose trust in it? Since that's a major part of what's keeping such a system going.

You shouldn't really care. Think if we can develop a system where one could work and exchange value in one currency, and store value in another currency. The first currency should disappear as soon as the transaction ends, and should appear as soon as there is a need to transact. The second currency gives a society IOU to give you a transaction in the first currency in the future.

Not sure how to do it, really.

This is the most important thing MMT supporters seem to ignore. Fiat money is a confidence game and all the theories will be pointless if people lose trust in the money.

It's the power of raising taxes what gives money its value.

"Variations of the modern-money narrative are found repeatedly throughout history. The levying of monetary ­taxes to create waged labor was “a nearly universal experience throughout Africa” in the colonial era, explains economist Randall Wray. Hut taxes, coupled with extreme violence and racial segregation, forced unwilling migrant laborers into the gold and diamond mines of South Africa. Bernard Magubane, an anthropologist, described the purpose of these taxes as being to “increase the economic pressure on the African peasants” to force them into waged work."

from: https://thenewinquiry.com/the-world-according-to-modern-mone...

What about food, fuel, clothes, etc? Taxes on everything will only go so far, at some point people will just trade all that illegally, on black markets, using different currencies.

Actually, I think that's the case in some countries today and the Soviet Union had a similar situation, people practically bartered, ignoring the state.

It doesn't matter if you have a big or small public debt (in your own currency), what's important is the real things in the economy.

If people is, for instance, using dollars instead of the currency of the country, it's, probably, because your country depend totally on imports (in the worst cases for basic things like food or energy).

If that's the case, the first steep to solve it, it's to recognize the problem. If you don't recognize the problem, you will finish addressing virtual problems like deficits or public debts instead of real resources constrains. Those are very difficult problems to address, but it will be even more difficult if you don't understand them.

The mainstream advice to development is: open your economy to competition, reduce deficits and public debt. The result of that is the impossibility of an agricultural, infrastructure or industrial policy that solve the real resources problem.

People can convert their BTC to USD at their obligation day and then your currency is only worth what % you collect in taxes. I don't think taxation will be the model for MMT, and only when you separate taxation, investment (storage of wealth) and daily transactions that you can get a healthy working system.

In the end, there will always be a government and people will need to trade.

Do you have any data to suggest that modern monetary theory is a more important factor here?

Edit: maybe that's not what you're suggesting, anyway, still curious.

https://www.world-grain.com/articles/13660-usda-eu-grain-out...

That’s seems like they are removing land from production unless I understand that wrong.

> The European Union’s grain output in 2020-21 is forecast to decline by 3% over the previous year due to extremely challenging planting conditions

My understanding is that they cannot plant due to the weather conditions.

I'm not surprised wheat is touched too.

My only gripe is that prices usually don't come down when the original problem causing the spike went away (say one or two years after). I'd like to understand why but feel it's one of these questions I'm not going to like the answer...

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/wheat

I don’t think you will find a box of 0.5kg of pasta at 0.15€ in Europe. Maybe you’re getting confused between a box (half a kilo) and a kilo of pasta.

https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/Product/hubbards-foodsto...

Not saying that it’s equivalent quality to Barilla but it’s definitely much cheaper

Barilla 1,6€ https://www.carrefour.it/p/barilla-tortiglioni-n%C2%B083-1kg...

Brand not famous 0,7€: https://www.carrefour.it/p/pasta-reggia-48.-fusilli-1-kg/800...

But the price can be very different if you want a top pasta

It could be much more by the end of the year, according to the article. Although to be honest i've never bought pasta that expensive (usually i buy < 1.5€/kg here in France).

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU

Seriously though, every single thing has been going up in price lately. The inflation is real. Over 50% here, another 50% there and there went our savings

Basically, inflation can be split into two types:

> An increase in the money supply may be called monetary inflation, to distinguish it from rising prices, which for clarity may be called "price inflation".

When everything conflates to inflation, it stops people from realizing the real inflation happening right under them.

So how much of this price rise is genuine demand and how much is a panicky market bulk buying in response to a perceived future shortage? Sounds like we might have a bit of a toilet paper situation here.

“Pasta is cheap anyway” is such a privileged point of view.

I mean the nonprofit giving them food flyers were all 'give veggies, fruits, bottled/canned sauce, they're already only eating pasta and we've got them on that.'

I was a penniless student minmaxing food price/consumption, but this is a slaughter.

Of course we got work in exchange, but if you don't try to help now, when will you.

Turns out, the results of this are amazing. Success or failure of the internship subjects, we've learned SO much from all the experiences, many of our young colleagues now have a tiny management experience, some really want to take more next years, some are more 'not for me but I'll help if you ask' and some are 'uh people management is not for me'. And there's a good mood from all this.

Most of the interns were amazing, ultra motivated, and (it's cynical, I know) so grateful. It's going to sound very trumpian but some of them, (not 'big guys, strong guys') when announced we were taking them in, literally melt down crying. One of them came in the last days of his stay, telling me he was so grateful we 'saved' him, because he couldn't find anything (the boy is top-5 in his school, WTF). Most of them came to me or their supervisor in the last days saying how hard it was out there and how relieved they were.

It was a hard year (try seriously reading, reviewing, correcting, RE-READING 35 internship reports/memos in 3 weeks), but no regrets.

https://www.bakeryandsnacks.com/Article/2021/09/10/Out-of-co...

In our modern economy, prices are often determined by supply, which can be influenced by factors like climate. Absolutely expected that it would cause inflation.

https://agfax.com/2021/07/23/wheat-drought-threatens-product...

https://ndwheat.com/growers/progress/dakotagoldnewsletter/WM...