While stopping by Murmuring Trees today I noticed that there was a post a short while ago about the high price of groceries. So I thought I’d give everyone a small taste of prices in the High Arctic.
First the grocery list, Bevson bought the following items, which came to a total of $47.00, some of the items have individual prices and they are noted.
1 Rotisserie chicken,
Package of Turkey dogs
Bag of Salad
4 apples
5 lb bag of potatoes – 99 cents
carton of grape tomatoes
carton of eggs
quart of goats milk
6 cans of cat food
box of cat food in pouches,
carton of ice cream
Of course, many of these items simply aren’t available, and I’ll try and show some alternatives. Also it being Good Friday I can’t run down to the store and check prices. All of these prices come from recent grocery slips.
1 Rotisserie chicken – we don’t have, and the last time I looked there wasn’t a whole frozen chicken at the store. So a box of breaded frozen fried chicken (five pieces) runs $16.49
Package of Turkey dogs – also unavailable, run of the mill mystery meat hotdogs are $3.99
Bag of Salad – $5.49
4 apples – For snacking we usually get a 3 lb bag of macs which run $9.99, but when I buy individual apples it is Granny Smiths for pie. I usually buy 7 apples, which run in the neighbourhood of $10.00, so four would be approximately $5.70
5 lb bag of pototoes – $8.29
Carton of grape tomatoes – We do get cherry tomatoes from time to time $5 something. Two smallish tomatoes bought yesterday (295 grams) $2.71
eggs 18 for $6.25, so a dozen are around $4.00
goats milk – Okay that’ll never happen. 2 litres of 2% is $4.15. We get 2 litres of Soyamilk for $8.99
Cat food I have no idea so I’ll just leave it out.
Carton of Ice cream 1 litre is $12.99
So the total, without the Cat Food is $66.10. I’m actually surprised that it is only 40% higher. Well I guess a little more without the Cat stuff factored in. Mom, if you’re reading this, please send food.
Update: As the store was open today I got to check the price of cat food. A tin of cat food is $2.85, so six would be $17.10. A box of cat food with 12 "packets" is $10.49. Thus a revised total for bevson’s shopping list up here would be $93.69, or 99% higher.
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9 responses
This makes me wonder what will happen to the sustainability of lives in remote locations as the oil begins to run out.
I’m sure the cat food would have bumped the total cost over the century mark or at least pretty darn close to it which is why I’m REALLY glad I don’t own a cat.
Cat food (in cans) isn’t too bad .. something like 3$ a can (my roommate has a cat …) Pouches, I have no idea as I don’t think they sell it up here.
And we can’t forget to add in the 23$ 1.2L jug of Welches Grape Juice! or the 12$ 2L Tropicana OJ.
Your prices sound similar to those in Barrow. I know that a gallon of milk ranges between $8.99 and $10.00. Bell peppers were $4.00 each last time I bought some. We don’t get any of the items on the list you posted here in this village, so I order from Barrow and pay hefty freight charges on top of the grocery bill. I’m curious about comparing, but it might make me ill to know the truth, so I think I’ll just stay blissfully ignorant for now. 🙂
OMG!!! I promise not to whine any more! And I thought it was terrible down here. I can’t get over how expensive your veg are–even root vegetables. How are folks on fixed incomes or people with families managing?
I don’t think life will be much more impacted up here than the rest of the world, Al. In some ways we’re more reliant on fossil fuels, in some ways less. Certainly the transport of goods, house heating and electricity makes us very dependent on it, but we are also less removed from a time of no or little reliance. Although there would be little taste for it among the youth many people here still have the skills to live on the land. Back when the media was trying to scare everyone into believing the world was going to come crashing to a halt in Y2K I often thought I was in the best place in the world if it did.
You’re prediction was pretty close Darcy, less than 7 dollars short of $100.
There are so many other examples Kennie. There are days I just want to bring up everyone from the House of Commons and give them a shopping list and open their eyes, have them book their own ticket to fly up also.
Luckily here we still have food mail, which in theory anyway, keeps some of the freight costs lower Kimberlee. For non-junk food items there is a subsidized freight rate, it costs a lot more, for instance, to ship in juice cocktails (that contain added sugar) as opposed to unsweetened juices. We get most of our meat from Yellowknife, and a large order (two boxes, about $1000 worth) only costs about $60 to ship here, far far below regular freight rates. In reality the savings in freight doesn’t really seem to translate into a savings at the stores.
It’s all relative bevson. Part (but only part) of the expense with say potatoes, is that there is a large loss in the winter months to freezing. The airline and the transport people do their best but some times it doesn’t take long to get part of the cargo touched by frost in the trip from the plane to the cage to the warehouse. People supplement their food with country food when they can, alot of the groceries are bought on social assistance. When we lived with Leah’s family we took it mostly on ourselves to do the suppers for everyone. There were eleven of us living there (3 babies) and our monthly groceries ran in the neighbourhood of $2000
So based on my minimal knowledge, It doesn’t sound like the “northern pay” really helps to balance things out. Yikes, I won’t complain about our hike in banana’s. 59c to 69c .
Northern Pay, for those that get it, helps somewhat, but really the only thing that will make a difference is for someone to step in and regulate the price airlines charge up here. Food mail helps, and a good sealift order also helps.
i read somewhere that foodmail isnt worth the money?
geez, your price up there is really not much difference with us down here. what really ticks me off though the price of junk is way lower than healthy food though i believe the Northern gets most of its money from junk. interestingly enough, told Frank to pick up some garlic and one of those minute maid orange juice. I saw the receipt, he picked up a small bottle of pepsi (its the 300ml ones), that is $2.09. 3 heads of garlic was 2.39 and the MM frozen orange juice (can) was $3.39.
funny though, before i read on and saw 5lbs potatoes for 99 cents, i was fuming but it was before i read its not the price in Arctic Bay! lol