Now It's A "Bumper Crop"?!?

Not long ago (late July in fact) we were being told that so much of America's farming heartland was flooded and crops were destroyed. We were going to face big increases in costs at the grocery store, not only because of higher fuel prices (to transport the food) but because there would be less of it to go around since so many of the crops were damaged.

This would affect meat, as animals would have to be slaughtered so compensate for the increasing food costs to growers. Thus, meat and poultry would go down a little after saturating the market, and then take a sharp increase.

Oh, but wait! Not two weeks later they're telling us that we going to have a bumper crop of soybeans and corn. Food shortage and price increases averted. Yay!
What? Food isn't going to go down now? Oh, because food buyers already based their costs on the 'expected' food shortages and susequent increases, so they are locked in on contracts with higher prices.
In other words, we're going to pay more because they already raised the prices and won't back down now.

So really, where's the good news in this?
We're already getting ass-raped at the gas pump, even though oil producers assure us that "they're doing everything they can to cut costs" while still reporting the biggest quarterly profits in years.
Now food retailers are going to get their fair share because not only is fuel more expensive but they are already paying higher prices based on "ESTIMATED INCREASES" that they got locked into contracts with their suppliers even though those costs aren't going to be as high as expected.

A few years back, the price of butter rose dramatically during the Holiday season. Shoppers were feeling the pinch and the news reported that it was due to "dairy producers not realizing the expected increase of usage, so they had cut back production and now supplies were short".
Really? Butter rose in price at the very peak of when people do most of their baking and the producers didn't plan for it? Are you kidding me?
If you haven't noticed, those prices STILL haven't come down yet. Even though there's been plenty of time to adjust for consumer consumption. Butter is still expensive.

Gas prices were over $4.50/gal and now that they dropped were happy to pay $3.99/gal.
Food prices will rise, even though expected costs won't be as much as they planned for.
Utilities have increased because they had to recover from all the storm damage a year ago, but never re-adjusted afterwards.

Which goes to show you that once a precedent has been set, we're expected to jus deal with it.
Welcome to the new future.