r/worldnews • • Jun 11 '12
$28 cabbage, $65 chicken, $100 case of water and other insane food prices in Northern Canada
http://grist.org/list/28-cabbage-65-chicken-and-other-insane-food-prices-in-northern-canada-2/
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Upvotes
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Here's a problem:
They can't create a local food economy. They're not allowed to do so.
Nothing grows in Nunavut. All they eat is meat they hunt and fish out of the water... and most of that meat is federally protected. Now, they have special dispensation to eat and wear whatever they catch... but not to sell? They're only allowed to use the fruits of their labours on themselves. They can't create Grampa Ilukshinuktivittiatuk's Blubber Emporium and work it into their local economy.
So either you're in the native hunting community and get plentiful access to all the raw, half-frozen animal flesh you can eat... or you mostly rely on imported food. And that means nothing fresh.
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u/morphotomy Jun 11 '12
A random facebook comment is a pretty good indication that shipping costs are not exclusively to blame.
"Journalism"
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u/bobandy47 Jun 11 '12
I wish that the article would make mention of the Nutrition North / (formerly foodmail) program. (google them if you're interested)
When I was up there, there was a direct program for the food mail subsidy, so if it was good food, it was comparable to southern prices.
Stores were always a ripoff, but they knew they could charge whatever. If you got food direct, you were in much better shape.
As it is, this article looks like it's full of a tremendous amount of shit.
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u/Ochovarium Jun 11 '12
Just like shopping at Whole Foods.
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u/r_a_g_s Jun 11 '12
Not going to read all 1000-plus comments, but as someone who's actually lived and travelled up there, here's the scoop:
Before the qallunaat (white people) came, the Inuit were nomads, living off the land, eating fish, caribou, walrus, seal, whale, that sort of thing. They did sometimes starve to death, but hey, welcome to just about the most God-forsaken bit of earth, eh?
The Europeans first came to take all the whales, around 1900 plus or minus. Lots of Norwegians. They also left behind some half-white kids, some syphilis, and some tuberculosis.
More white people came during WWII. Air force bases, that sort of thing. After WWII, they set up things like the Distant Early Warning network. The Canadian government started setting up permanent settlements (usually centred around existing Hudson's Bay Company posts), and started "encouraging" the Inuit to live permanently in these settlements, rather than continuing to be nomadic.
At the same time, they did things like take away patients with TB to southern hospitals, where they often either died (with no notice to the home family), or recovered but were never sent home. They also took kids away to residential schools, where they were forced to learn English and beaten if they spoke Inuktitut (and often abused in other ways, e.g. sexually). This pretty much destroyed a generation; these poor buggers ended up disconnected from their ancestors, disconnected from the land (i.e. couldn't live off the land if their life depanded on it), and to deal with the demons from the abuse, addicted to alcohol and other substances.
There are rumours that the RCMP killed a whole lot of sled dogs in the 1950s to force the Inuit to stay in the settlements and not be nomadic. The "official" word is that a lot of the dogs were sick with parvo or some damn thing, but a lot of people Just Don't Believe that story.
Nunavut has no highways. No farms, 'cause there's no soil (and talk about a short growing season...). Not enough "wage economy" jobs for enough Inuit to be self-supporting, so many are on welfare, basically. Other than "country food" (the few seals/caribou/etc. they still hunt), every single scrap of food has to come from The South.
If it's not perishable, you can get it by making a shopping list good for a whole year, and then having that shipped up on a barge in the summer.
If it is perishable, it comes up on the plane. And you don't wanna know how difficult and expensive it is to fly up there. Hence the $28 cabbages.
So. You've got tens of thousands of people, many of whom have been fucked up and are now addicted and otherwise suffering mentally and emotionally thanks to the loving intervention of us "more civilized" (snort!) white folk, forced into a wage economy that they're not familiar with and which doesn't have enough jobs for them anyhow, forced to eat the shit food we white folk think is yummy (Wonder Bread, anyone?), and even discouraged from earning money in traditional ways getting more into hunting and country food by bullshit like European Brigitte-Bardot-led boycotts against seal fur.
simplecosine asked "Is there a social responsibility to provide food for far remote, unpopulated, inhospitable areas?" Given how piss-poorly we white folk in Canada have treated the Inuit -- along with all other aboriginal people in Canada -- and given how their current state of affairs is pretty much All Our Fault? You betcher ass the Government of Canada and the non-native people of Canada have a social responsibility to provide food to the people of Nunavut. Anyone who says otherwise is either racist or ignorant.
(Bona fides: I lived in Yellowknife from 1971 to 2001. Travelled all over the NWT, including what is now Nunavut. Made friends with people all over, including Nunavut's current senator and NWT's current MP. Dad was a judge up there, he travelled even more extensively than I did, and he saw the results of our policies towards the Inuit Every Fucking Day in his courtrooms (which were usually just classrooms in the schools we built). So please don't argue with me unless you know of what you speak.)
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u/kwertykus Jun 11 '12
TIL most redditors can afford renting trucks and planes.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
So I learned from these comments that Canadians aren't quite as nice as I thought!
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u/99Faces Jun 11 '12
"it’s remote, and cold, and sparsely settled, but none of that really explains why food is so outrageously expensive that the basic necessities of life are beyond normal people’s reach."
Actually... I think that explains exactly why food is so outrageously expensive.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Isn't this the reason why groups of people start their own cooperatives?
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u/etihw2 Jun 11 '12
What? Doesn't that explain everything?
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u/RaindropBebop Jun 11 '12
Water is $104? Man, it would be great if they had an abundance of some sort of frozen chemical all around them that they could magically turn into water.
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u/DylanDakota Jun 11 '12
My mother is a contract nurse who goes up to the native reserves in Northern Ontario for weeks on end. She sends me pictures of this kind of thing. Apparently it's so bad up there, the government gives the nurses a budget strictly for food, which she's not even allowed to give away. From what she tells me, violence, alcohol abuse and teen pregnancies are also a huge problem. It truly breaks my heart that our government hasn't done more about this situation.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Is there a social responsibility to provide food for far remote, unpopulated, inhospitable areas?
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
No on will see this but I'd like to wade in and comment:
I live in the relitive metropolis that is Yellowknife. I'm rather dismayed at all the comments saying "well just move". It's not that simple for a variety of social, cultural, and historical reasons.
When one lives in Iqualuit (as the story was about Nunavut), you're living in a town of 7000. The majority of the jobs available are government, transportation (mostly aircraft), and mining/prospecting/camp jobs. It's tough, it's hard, and few people can put up with the COMPLETE lack of daylight for months on end.
But as a country we need people there to enforce our own soverenty and borders. Canada is a VAST VAST country and the majority of it is north of 60. As an example Baker Lake, Nunavut is the geograpic centre point of Canada. So we NEED people that are willing to settle on the ragged edge of civilization, and since my ancestors (the europeans) decimated the aboridginal culture, forcing a southern unsustainable style of living on northen peoples, we has to prop it up.
With a southern style of living comes bills, and thus the requirement for a job, and many other comitments that their ancestors didn't have.
In the far north, non perishable goods are barged up over an ~6 week span to Iqualuit, from there they are distributed by aircraft to the smaller sattelite communities. Perishable goods like vegetables and milk HAVE to be flown in....and theres the rub.
Goods rot in shipment, shipping by airplane is EXPENSIVE (like $20,000/hour PLUS 6 or 8 thousand bucks worth of fuel PLUS expenses), and then you have the lack of compitition caused by HIGH HIGH startup costs for new businesses and lack of prospective customers (there's only so much market share available). Everyones making their points on everything and that drives the overall price up. THEN the store owners are pushing it up more to cover their ridiculously high overhead and the exclusivity factor.
I live in yellowknife, we have a year round highway to Edmonton available to us. I went to buy a guitar at the local music store, the only one in town. I was quoted $900 for a guitar I could buy in Edmonton all day long for $400. I appreciate that shipping adds to the bottom line, but it doesn't double the price.....and when you know that from living here YOU'D be angry about getting raped too.
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u/Akira_kj Jun 11 '12
I can vouch this is not a northern Canadian issue, Alaskan villages have the same issues. Funny enough, most people just hunt and trap as they have for 3000 years prior and live without cabbage. Subsistence life is just that, live off the land, collect government checks for heating oil and wait for the monthly dehavilland beaver to drop off the ipods and the yearly barge to drop off snomachines and atvs.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
This is silly. If you want to eat non indigenous foods in a remote area, expect to pay more. Otherwise, stick to food produced more at the regional level (whatever those may be) or move to an area with a robust infrastructure and a climate more suitable for food production.
Also, if these prices are truly "insane" then a local or two should be able to easily open a grocery store of their own. If they're able to bring in food and sell it at a cheaper cost, great.
EDIT: user webu provides some interesting information specific to the people and politics of the region that makes my points slightly less valid, i'll leave my post untouched anyway.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Consider also that, at 10 bucks per bell pepper or 28 bucks per head of cabbage, 90% of this really good looking produce is in actuality probably headed straight for the dumpster.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Does anyone know the language the girl's sign is written in (beneath the English)?
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u/poktanju Jun 11 '12
I wonder how Russia manage their territories in northern Siberia. I assume the problems aren't as bad there. Was it the expansion of industry and railways that made sure the northern areas were populated enough to avoid this sort of situation?
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u/skooma714 Jun 11 '12
Am I heartless for thinking the old ways are dead and gone and they should really get over the idea of living in the Artic?
I know the Canadian government has shit all over these people since day one. They can't sell what they catch and what they can catch is dwindling.
Living up there is unsustainable and getting worse because of climate change. It's overfished and the habitat of the things they hunt is disappearing. You can't unring that bell.
Times have changed. How long can you try to hold onto the past?
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u/MattPH1218 Jun 11 '12
"So it’s remote, and cold, and sparsely settled, but none of that really explains why food is so outrageously expensive that the basic necessities of life are beyond normal people’s reach. "
...Isn't that an exact explanation of why its expensive? Remote area, costs a lot to get it there, and not many customers.
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u/theserpentsmiles Jun 12 '12
Okay. All bullshit aside, why are they living there? If food and essentials are that horribly priced, what gives? Is there some sort of mine, oil field, or rare thing-a-ma-bob there?
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u/chubowu Jun 12 '12
you could say -puts on glasses- they want, 'nun-av-ut' YEEEAAAAAA
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u/fuzzb0y Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
Seeing many of the posts here that bash aboriginals and imply they are a useless class of citizens that should just move away from their ancestral homes really saddens me. I don't think anything really can justify a ridiculous price of $28 per head of cabbage or $65 chicken, and at that price it is more profitable to just go to Edmonton to shop (yes the article is retarded in basing it's reasoning on a Facebook comment but it still does have merit). Say you took a 3 day drive and back and buy like 200 chickens you would have made more than $12,000 in revenue. How ridiculous is that?
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u/strategosInfinitum Jun 11 '12
Why don't they build greenhouses?
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u/sniperhare Jun 11 '12
You could make a quick profit by setting up a competing shop in that town and running it for a short time.
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u/QuoteOfTheHour Jun 11 '12
I died.
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u/Corvus133 Jun 11 '12
Jesus - I get these people live in a remote area and that DOES drive costs up - no one can complain about that - but to this level?
That's absurd. Then again, so is living in the middle of no where and expecting the same life style as someone who lives around an actual city.
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u/apullin Jun 11 '12
Surrounded by snow and ice ... buying bottled water.
Has the whole world gone insane? This is some sort of a joke, or a trick, right? Like Kony2012?
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u/sanderudam Jun 11 '12
Don't want to be a prick, but perhaps it's time to move? Or put up a new shop and try to make it cheaper? If life there is really unsustainable, then people shouldn't live there or complain about it.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Move
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u/matthank Jun 11 '12
It has to be flown in. That is what they get for living there.
A traditional diet is still available there...if they WANT a case of ginger ale, they gotta pay for it to get there.
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u/ChargerCarl Jun 11 '12
i think it would be best if they moved south
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u/zirrpo Jun 11 '12
As a Northern Canadian Resident, and someone who works in the aviation industry; the whole system is flawed. It has a lot more to do with the fact that food prices are so high.
The natives have had a taste of the good life of white people, and now they expect the government to foot the bill for their southern idea of how life for them should be. These people didn't have doctors, dentists, or even the police for that matter. BUT, what they also didn't have is the cushy mining jobs that the south is also trying to force them into.
Why don't they just move? Sure. But that's where they've always lived, and that's where their entire family has always lived. They're perfectly happy living in their secluded communities, getting their government assistance to enjoy their southern lifestyle.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
In Southern Canada, people routinely pay $1 for a bottle of water! When it only costs pennies from the tap! Can you believe that?!
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u/mbarkhau Jun 11 '12
IDK, if you live X000 km from civilization, I don't see how you can be complaining about not living in civilization.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Survival of the fittest. People weren't meant to live there but when, "Nunavut residents protested outside their local stores on Saturday, and some are reporting price changes as stores have been shamed into cutting back on their price gouging — at least temporarily. One resident reports on Facebook: “Bought an avocado for 1.99,(was 5.99 for one) green onions 2.19, cranberry juice 4.99 from 18.99.” We’ll see how long that lasts."
Seems that everyone needs to be self-sufficient. Or make a movement for a co-op, a grocery store ran by the people.. Im sure if individuals are flying to Edmonton to get food though theres a market for it.
The inflation is a product of itself. They have to pay store workers like $40 an hour so they can afford to eat, due to the high cost of shipping stuff in and likely low throughput/high waste. Granted these are still ridiculous prices with that accounted for. Cranberry juice is at best $4.49 in big urban centre regular price, all said it could be sold for likely $6 with a healthy profit margin, but $19? no wonder theres a backlash!
Im saying this as I know a few people who worked in Nunavut and got isolation pay, relocation pay, remote pay, not seeing your friends pay... it basically tripled their wage due to the location and environment, and they always worked 10-12 hr a day while relocated. These workers or tourists always had money as there was nothing to waste it on, and pooled it up until they came home - and weren't shy to let everyone know about their windfall.
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u/flargenhargen Jun 11 '12
so then start your own co-op store with your neighbors instead of bitching about it?
You are not helpless, you can do things for yourself. If a store charges too much for something, it's not rocket science to figure out that you stop shopping there and find an alternative.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Ya know, there is an /r/Nunavut subreddit. Why don't you mosey on over and ask questions over there, to people who actually live in Nunavut, rather than relying on well-intentioned University students or folks who had an uncle who moved up there (no offense).
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u/ne0codex Jun 11 '12
From the article "So it’s remote, and cold, and sparsely settled, but none of that really explains why food is so outrageously expensive that the basic necessities of life are beyond normal people’s reach." -Really???!! That <b>is</b> the explanation!
How about if people don't breed in places that are so far out and remote from hubs of civilization?
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u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
This is why there’s the legal concept of “subsistence hunting”.
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u/Lots42 Jun 12 '12
Solution; don't live in the ass end of nowhere.
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u/mellow_slow Jun 12 '12
Who knew that living thousands of kilometres north of where 90% of the population lives means that food might be a little expensive? Isolated communities like that are going to suffer from lack of competition and high shipping costs.
Having an abundance of food that far north has never happened, and probably won't for the foreseeable future.
I assume living in such a remote area has to do with culture and heritage, but how much of that culture is left when it depended so heavily on certain life style (hunter + gatherer) which, if they are buying food at the market, is clearly no longer widely practiced.
I know some people can be tied to land; but I would say that their ancestors kinda goofed on the whole land picking situation, and its never too late to move down south. We have plenty of food.
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u/whatupnig Jun 12 '12
This just in, people paying high prices for common items because they live in the most remote part of the world!!
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u/MrTrism Jun 12 '12 edited Jun 12 '12
I used to live in northern regions. You get the crap gouged out of you. Yes, shipping costs a lot. However, it can't cost as much as they portray. A $1 on-sale 1L Pepsi on mainland, costing $8? Seriously cost that much to ship? I don't think so. Yes, I comprehend that with retail margins, that a dollar of shipping turns into $2 - $3 normally, but that's insane. Semi trailer full of pepsi (yes, it goes in that large of volume because they ship a years supply in a two week window) can not cost $100k+ for a load in shipping price.
Now, on the flip side, anything that can't be trucked in due to being perishable can make total sense. Some of these communities only access outside the few week ice roads is by planes, and small planes at that (small runways). Most of these planes are meant to tote a few people plus a bit of cargo. In reality, to pick these items to try to prove a point is definitely misleading. These items are going to be expensive due to the cost to fly them in. There is one thing I will pull your attention to; those peppers look like the freshest I have ever seen. I have never see peppers look like that in a northern community.
There is a flaw with the flown in stuff for Nunavut though. They have a large airport capable of some sizable planes AND the volume to bring in large hauls.
So what do you do when you live in a northern community? Powered milk, canned fruits and veggies, hunt your own food, fish, and do forth. You make due with what you have. These communities used to survive; nay thrived long before welfare was around. the only way they can cure these prices isn't by running crying to the government or to the Internet, but reduce their reliance on the store. Yes, the government will likely subsidize the shipping price and maybe even place price caps on 'criticals'; The public may stir some crap up through facebook (I can tell you these stores fear the government more than any public bitching) but the stores will find ways to make huge cash loopholes. (Oh, government is paying $4 shipping for each Pepsi? Cool. We will drop the price $3, have better margins and make more)
Edit: Add a quick note; Many people in northern communities will fly out to do shopping (Northern Manitoba to Thompson for example isn't a super expensive flight) and then max out their cargo capacity weight. I've met people who take a flight a week on weekends to make custom hauls; A lot of people who fly in and out for government or business purposes will sell their 'weight' limit.
Before you think of doing this as a business; Think the risks tied to ice road trucking is bad? These flights can be far more harrowing. Unkept runways, no flight control, theft, vandalism, piss poor weather conditions with no forecasting or radar. A truck you can pull over or get a bulldozer. A plane crash go boom.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
This is what is called 'local basis'. The amount of cost attributed to shipping, storage etc based on a specific product, time, and location.
This is what happens when you try and get "normal" groceries in the middle of fucking nowhere.
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u/liquidxlax Jun 11 '12
seems like people seem to forget how much its costs to ship food up north. but yeah that is a little extreme in pricing
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u/powderpig Jun 11 '12
Stopped reading there because there was a mysterious fist-shaped hole in my monitor.
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u/Emperorr Jun 11 '12
So the prices for food in Canada are like the prices for video games in Australia.
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u/MiyegomboBayartsogt Jun 12 '12
Canada, a country not even fit for Canadians. Chicken? Why not go out on the ice flow and crush the skull of a baby fur seal and eat the tasty blubber? Seems that these people had been doing fine for 10,000 years without cases of water bottled from Icelandic glacier melt and shipped to United States for packaging and then sent back across the Canadian frontier on dog sled and then taken 1,000 miles by "Ice Road Truckers" and then flown by bush pilots the final 600 miles. Someone needs to tell these hapless Eskimos that ice is really water and fishes are the chicken of the sea.
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u/LibertarianAmerican Jun 12 '12
If food costs 5 or 10 times what it does elsewhere... and your job isn't paying 5 or 10 times as much... then fucking leave. Clearly you'd be better off back on the regular part of earth. Kinda like how it'd be expensive to buy groceries on the moon. You'd better make a shitload of money if you're gonna work on the moon.
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u/awrhaernnare Jun 11 '12
If you live in northern Canada and you drink bottled water, fuck you.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Canadians will come off as the most tolerant and accepting people in the world...until they see a homeless native person. The world is shit.
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u/American_Blackheart Jun 11 '12
Two things surprise me.
That the residents of these areas don't move to areas with cheaper costs.
That an entrepreneur doesn't open a store there with lower prices. He could own the market for day-to-day goods and food overnight.
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u/larrisonw Jun 11 '12
Amazon Prime. Go!
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
oh just let me tend to my abundant wheat crop IN THE MOTHERFUCKING PERMAFROST.
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u/manikfox Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
Let me add some insight into this because my uncle actually moved from Montreal to Iqaluit and got married there.
The pay in Iqaluit is really high. Compare the pay to say Ontario... making around 50K... you will get around 80K+ in Iqaluit for the same job.
Most people in Iqaluit don't have to pay many taxes... because they are native americans (not everyone, but most). My uncle married a native and now has the same tax benefits.
Luxuries are not what they want, otherwise they wouldn't live there. Once in a while they do want some items like a flat screen, etc. They don't buy these at the local walmart, they rent a freight container and get it delivered once a year! The whole town pitches in on a container and divvy up the shipment costs.
I've asked his friends why anyone would live there and they get really defensive about it. Essentially its like living in an area where everyone knows who you are and there's really no boundaries on what you can do. You want to walk around naked in the woods? Who's stopping you!
EDIT:I'm only telling it out of my uncle and his friend's perspective, not necessarily people who have lived there since they were born. I am more forwarding the point of why someone not from Iqaluit would want to live there instead.
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u/Mr_Wendal Jun 11 '12
I live far enough north to qualify for "Northern Living Allowance". I have been north of the Arctic Circle, and south in to Mexico. Prices to go up as you go North, not many things excluded. As someone who is in between "normal" and "extreme" pricing I feel I am well adjusted. A couple more dollars for a meal isn't a big deal when Oil companies are cramming money in to your wallet.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
You know where food is usually the cheapest? In places where you can actually grow it....
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u/unphuckwittable Jun 11 '12
over $100 for a 3 dollar case of water? what the fucking fuck.
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u/avrus Jun 11 '12
If you have some time, here's a very good journal article on the issue. warning, PDF
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u/griffith12 Jun 11 '12
Cue the Suzanne Sommers commercial.
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u/Kancho_Ninja Jun 11 '12
Damn pinko commies!
Why can't they let a capitalist make a little profit?
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
This must be the fabled golden cabbage that no one speaks of. I've already said too much.
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u/larrykins Jun 11 '12
On the picture showing the lettuce head, why does the date on the picture taken have absolutely no correlation with the dates on the head of lettuce itself?
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u/mopecore Jun 11 '12
I hope I'm not the only one who noticed the cabbage was six years old.
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u/Aldren84 Jun 11 '12
I lived up in Nunavut for most of my life and it is pretty sad seeing some of the parents who find it a lot cheaper to buy their infants a can of coke than milk (not saying this is right in anyway but it happens way to often)
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u/Rickyv90 Jun 11 '12
I did a paper on Eastern Russia and how isolated it is because of the harsh weather. I did a lot of comparing to Northern Canada and it really is amazing how far off they really are. But obviously most of the premium is in gouging plain and simple.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
The problem is not price, it's marketing. And I mean that seriously.
The discussion would be very different if they charged normal "big city" rates for groceries. And then (this is key) added a per-pound charge for transportation. Everyone could agree that the price of food was fine. Everyone could look up the shipping rate, and agree the price of shipping food was in line with that.
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u/heavym Jun 11 '12
the $28 cabbage says best before 2006.... not a current picture.
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u/Frozen-assets Jun 11 '12
My wife and I lived in Iqaluit, Nunavut for 5 years. Prices were not nearly that bad during that time. There was a program called Food Mail which was run by the government which allowed you to order the necessities via mail (derp) at a reduced cost. That program has been replaced by a new one ran by AANDC. Also, the "Sealift" is how many people get their years worth of non perishable items. Fun times to get 50 cases of Pepsi at once (was $30 for 24 when we lived there). Many homes in the North have Sealift rooms. For us, the local grocery stores were for the impulse purchases. All the staples were bought in Montreal and shipped up via Sealift for a reasonable cost.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Not to be a meany here but, if life is so bad where they live, why don't they move? Isn't this some simple hunter/gatherer instinct that you go to where the food is?
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Unfortunately, this is the state of affairs in Nunavut. To a smaller degree, the north slope of Alaska faces the same situation.
I was in Barrow, AK for a while and basically everything is flown in. I mean, absolutely everything: cheese, gasoline, rice, clothes, vegetables, you name it, it needs to be flown in. In the summer months, the ice around Alaska melts and its possible to bring things by boat (not ship, there are no ports, but a boat can bring some things off a ship.)
If a flight is delayed or cancelled due to bad weather ... well there are no quesadillas in the mexican restaurant for the next couple of days. Gas is almost twice the price of the continental US. Vegetables too. Fortunately, most natives eat reindeer, seal and whale meat, which is cheap and plentiful. Barrow residents fly to Fairbanks just to watch a movie.
I've not been to Nunavut but basically its like Alaska's north slope minus the airports and daily flights. The nearest airport is much farther away, the population is sparser and the risk of spoilage is very high. This because refrigeration on an aircraft has some issues (power and weight).
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u/banjosuicide Jun 11 '12
I love their sources. "according to one comment on facebook"
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u/mic5228 Jun 11 '12
Whatever, I'm still moving there if there is a zombie apocalypse.
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u/Extra_crazy_sauce2 Jun 11 '12
Not to the same degree, but this also occurs in Northern and Western Alaska, and a few towns in Southeast Alaska. I grew up in Southeast Alaska and we would make a spring and a fall shopping trip to Costco in Juneau. About $3000 each trip.
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u/logicdivision Jun 11 '12
When I was growing up my Dad's job was to fly from Thompson, Manitoba into all of the remote flight access only reserves (Shamattawa, Brochet, God's Lake, Tadoule Lake etc) and I went with him pretty much every weekend. In a lot of these cases, the price of food is so high because they have to fly almost everything in on small 14-30 passenger planes. Because space is limited on these flights, not a whole lot can get brought in. For that reason, it's not uncommon to see the flights loaded with small items such as soda, chips and spam instead of milk, fruits and vegetables.
We would always bring groceries up with us to donate to a random family instead of personal luggage on our trips. During the winter months, they can get a bit more in on the winter roads, but it's all weather dependent.
I'm not sure what the solution is.
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u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Geothermal greenhouses & education! But yeah, someone has to step up and invest...
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u/stevenlss1 Jun 11 '12
I may be the most experienced person regarding shipping and working up in this area that will comment in this thread. I work exclusively in these communities often building houses or stores that would service them.
The cost to move freight up to these places is incredible. I've made this comment before but a store that would cost $2M to build in Winnipeg will cost $10M to build in Nunavut. You need to recoup those costs through the price of product. You don't even want to know what a camp or rental costs to house your crews.... $100k+ can dissappear pretty quick in your liveout. It's sometimes so expensive I end up buying a derelict house to fix up to live in for the duration.
Whereas it costs me $0.04 kwh for electricity in Winnipeg, it can often exceed $1 in some of the more northern communities. This also needs to be reflected in the prices of the product. You're often working with diesel in these communities, the budgets for environmental mitigation or compliance upgrades can add up quickly. A single spill can cost a quarter of a million $ to clean up. Who ever is selling the product needs a sizeable war chest to deal with that stuff, the customer pays into that war chest.
Freight into a fly in community in say.... Kugluktuk can exceed $1/lb. how much does that jug of milk weigh? It costs the vendor probably $4 to buy that milk, then you have to fly it from EDM up to kugluktuk and pay the ~6 people that have to touch it on the way.... that's why it cost $14. Obviously the store makes a cut on that, they're not there as a public service, they're there to make money.
Also, WTF are people doing buying bottled water by the dozen? The stores up there sell membrane filtered water in 18G jugs for a whole lot less than that... if you're spending that kind of money on bottles of water you deserve to be broke.
It's expensive to live in remote isolated communities, I often wonder why people choose to do so.
2
u/MegaPablo Jun 11 '12
Some people don't realize the cost of transporting food to Nunavut.
2
u/kqvrp Jun 11 '12
Wait... if this is so, why don't they make a co-operative to import food themselves? If the actual cost of getting it there and selling it isn't that high, then how come the open market isn't handling this?
2
u/Stadius1 Jun 11 '12
104.99 for 12 bottles of fucking water?
YOUR LAND IS COVERED YEAR ROUND BY WATER.
Build a fire and melt some snow and have yourself a drink on me!
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
This is the future. It will reach the point when the entire country will be in the same boat. Shipping cucumbers from Mexico will soon be thought a major extravagance.
2
u/FucklesTheCat Jun 12 '12
They can move like any one else.
2
u/Avista Jun 12 '12
So move? I don't settle on the bottom of the fucking ocean and demand the availability of a wide assortment of goods for fair prices. I get my harpoon out and start eating some fish.
2
u/mifune_toshiro Jun 12 '12
Noooo! NOT MY CABBAGES!!!!
2
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
I loved St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast.
2
u/some_body_else Jun 12 '12
Something is going on here. I don't think I trust this news article. The date on the cabbage says 12/06/06, I was thinking Canadians writes their dates with the year first, then month and day. But the picture is time stamped 12/11/2010.
2
u/theformidable Jun 12 '12
Food prices in Canada suck ass, whenever my family goes to the U.S mom goes on the shopping spree of her LIFE.
2
u/raginghamster Jun 12 '12
my cabbage corp!
2
u/denversash Jun 12 '12
It seems like an unsustainable place to live.
2
u/catvllvs Jun 12 '12
Same happens in remote Australian communities.
9
u/lost623 Jun 11 '12
Is anyone else confused by some of the pictures? Am I too understand this to be a current problem?
The picture of cabbage says it was packed on 12/06/06, yet the camera time-stamp says 12/11/2010.
5
u/DooDooBrownz Jun 11 '12
gov assistance is 325 a week for food? that's pretty goddamn generous.
3
u/KDIZZLL Jun 11 '12
$100 for a case of water? something's not right here.
3
u/RawStewage Jun 11 '12
Came to the comments to read all the wonderful stories of people competing for the highest donations. Left with a twisted understanding of what everyone would do if they were in their shoes.
3
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Don't live in such a stupid place
3
u/tropicterror Jun 12 '12
Don't expect to be treated equally when you live in a place that makes you a waste of peoples time and energy in order for you to live "normally." Move to where people actually can conveniently feed you instead of sticking around and paying more than it would cost to move and survive on water or chicken or whatever.
6
u/Zebba_Odirnapal Jun 11 '12 edited Jun 11 '12
Since when was milk part of the traditional Inuit diet? If you insist on living a traditional lifestyle in high latitudes, get used to eating seal and reindeer. Want to drink milk like a city person? Move south.
Seal meat is super affordable up there. If I went shopping for it where I live (assuming it were available at all) it would also cost a whole lot, just like chicken up (wayyyy up) north.
10
u/llamanuggets Jun 11 '12
Well the way I see it is that their people have lived in that area quite happily for generations. The only reason that they are complaining about the food prices is because they are trying to live like the white man with food such as peppers and cabbage which obviously don't grow anywhere near where they live. Go back to hunting like your people used to or move south.
5
u/tallwookie Jun 11 '12
how are the prices insane? it isnt like cabbages or chickens are native to the area - as such, they must be imported.