Food inflation drives up seaweed prices

Food inflation is now showing itself in a 20% rise in seaweed prices compared with last year.

Dried seaweed is a soup staple and roasted seaweeds and sushi are gaining popularity. Non-financial factors such as typhoons and unseasonably warm weather have hit farming and limited supply this year. But this probably does not fully explain the jump in seaweed prices.

China‘s economic development means that farmers are growing less of the stuff. Many coastal areas, where seaweed farms are located, have been reclaimed to build ports, homes and nuclear power plants. Property price inflation means wet markets and supermarkets, where seaweed is sold, have to pay higher rent.

Meanwhile, rapid wage increases have made labor-intensive vegetables more costly to produce. Minimum wages have risen 15% in major cities this year.

Business Standard reports that as more people move off the land, farmers who have stayed put enjoy more pricing power.