WHEN THE CHEAPER OPTION STOPS BEING CHEAP
South African households do not experience food inflation as a percentage on a spreadsheet. They experience it as a sequence of substitutions, compromises and items quietly disappearing from the trolley.
A household rarely abandons protein altogether the first time beef becomes too expensive.
It moves sideways.
Steak becomes mince. Beef becomes pork. Pork becomes chicken. A larger portion becomes a smaller one.
That process can make inflation appear manageable for a while. The grocery bill still rises, but families protect the meal by changing what goes into it.
The danger begins when the cheaper alternatives start catching up.
AFFORDABILITY IS A LADDER
Food products do not exist in isolation.
Their importance depends partly on what they cost compared with the alternatives around them.
In the price ranges discussed in Number of the Day, chicken remains at the lower end, pork occupies the middle and beef mince sits higher. The exact prices vary by retailer, cut and quantity, but the hierarchy matters.
Pork’s role is not only that it is pork.
Its role is that it gives households somewhere to move when beef becomes too expensive.
That is why the latest warning carries more weight than a routine product-price increase.
Wholesale pork prices have moved from approximately R32 to R40 per kilogram as African swine fever and tighter supply place pressure on the market. Industry reporting says surplus stock previously helped absorb the shock, but that buffer has been depleted.
The concern is not simply that pork may cost more.
It is that the middle rung of the affordability ladder may be moving upwards.
SMALL SHORTAGES CAN CREATE LARGE PRICE MOVEMENTS
Food supply chains can be remarkably sensitive.
Reporting on the pork industry warns that even a relatively small supply shortage can produce a much larger price reaction. A shortage of around 2%, for example, may drive an increase of roughly 10% because of the way pork prices respond to constrained supply.
That is what turns an animal-health outbreak into a household-budget story.
The disease begins on farms.
Its consequences move through transporters, abattoirs, processors, retailers and restaurants before arriving at the till.
Each business along that chain must decide how much additional cost it can absorb and how much must be passed forward.
Consumers often encounter the result without seeing the machinery behind it.
They simply notice that bacon costs more, the pack is smaller or the weekly meat purchase no longer stretches as far.
THE PROBLEM IS THE ACCUMULATION
One price increase can sometimes be managed.
Households switch brands, change retailers or buy less.
The deeper strain comes when several categories move at the same time.
The episode notes that some meat-price pressure had moderated month on month. But fish, dairy and eggs rose during the same period, while pork faced renewed supply pressure.
This is how food inflation becomes more than the story of one product.
The consumer is not choosing between one expensive item and a stable basket.
They may be choosing between several alternatives that are all becoming less affordable at different speeds.
The result is a narrowing menu.
Not because people have lost interest in variety, but because the household budget has started making dietary decisions on their behalf.
SALARIES ARE THE MISSING SIDE OF THE EQUATION
A food-price increase does not affect every household equally.
The decisive question is not only how quickly groceries rise.
It is whether income rises with them.
Gareth Edwards captures the imbalance plainly in the episode:
“The salaries don’t go with it.”
That is the line beneath the entire cost-of-living crisis.
When earnings remain flat, each increase claims a larger share of the same salary.
Families do not merely pay more.
They surrender choices.
The cheaper brand replaces the preferred one. The protein portion becomes smaller. Fresh food competes with transport, electricity, school costs and debt repayments.
Eventually, affordability stops meaning that an item is inexpensive.
It means that buying it requires giving something else up.
A possible 25% increase in pork prices is therefore not only a warning about what may happen to chops, bacon or sausages.
It is a warning about the shrinking distance between the foods households consider expensive and the foods they once considered alternatives.
When the cheaper option stops being cheap, the real question is not what consumers switch to next.
It is how many options remain.
Catch up on all Number of the Day episodes here: https://www.enca.com/number-day-podcast