A buck a pound – or more – for bananas?
Just spent a weekend with my girlfriend visiting the action-packed and gorgeous little town of McCall, Idaho – about two hours north of Boise. We did some amazing backcountry and nordic skiing – helped by a late-season dump that put almost a foot of fresh powder on the slopes (yes, the life of a struggling author. It kills!) – and generally had a good time checking out the coffee shops and restaurants in the lakeside village (population: 2,500, but getting trendy, according to the New York Times.)
But when we went in search of lunch, we stopped in at a small gourmet shop – the nice City Market & Wine, right on State Highway 55 – and I saw something I’d never, ever encountered: bananas for over a buck a pound (in fact, the price was $1.11.) The clerk explained that these organics – the country of origin wasn’t noted, but I could tell from the stickers that they were from Mexico – had been going up for months (see my previous entry on banana prices, here), and had just broken the 99 cent barrier a week earlier.
Yes, McCall’s an isolated resort town, and this was a gourmet market, so prices are going to be high. But for me, this is more shocking than gas at four bucks a gallon.
Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman 
