Why is the price of cooking oil (corn, vegetable, canola) going up?

Has anyone else noticed the price for cooking oil going up and I was wondering why especially when gas prices have gone down? I went to buy some corn oil and we first looked at walgreens (trying to avoid the walmart crowd) and it was a small bottle for $4.50 for Crisco vegetable. I decided to go to Sweetbay instead. I had a coupon for Crisco or Mazola and it was around $4.50 for the regular size bottle. I bought the store brand for $3.70. We usually pay around $2. My hubby went to Walmart yesterday and said it was around the same as Sweetbay.





I am use to prices going up, but I thought it was a strange time to raise them when prices are coming back down a little bit. I tried googling but couldn't find anything. I wanted to know if anyone else noticed.Why is the price of cooking oil (corn, vegetable, canola) going up?
There are 3 possibilities:





1. Inflation in your area has risen and prices of many other products are going up too.





2. There was an importing problem and for this reason the prices have gone up because the store still has to make as much income with a smaller amount.





3. Do you know what ethanol is made of? This is a world wide discussion. Ethanol is very easy to produce unlike other Eco-friendly gases. But because it is made out of crops the world food prices are rising. Corn is a widely used crop to make ethanol.Why is the price of cooking oil (corn, vegetable, canola) going up?
Last week our local grocery had Green Giant frozen veggies on sale. I happened to have 6 coupons and we have double coupon here. My coupon was 50 cents and doubled was $1.00. The cost of the veggies were 79 cents. Ended up getting 6 bags for free and they even paid me the few cents back. I always shop for the deals or sales and for the coupon items that I buy. I save tons so I cannot complain about the prices.
geezz 4.50 !! lucky !





i pay 6.99 for mazola


the regular ones are 5.99











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because people are greedy just like gas went up to over 4 dollars for like no reason well food i think is going to stay up for a while to catch up from summer. i blame Bush...... for everything that is wrong with this country today
I think that since the economy is so crazy these days, that might contribute to that and a lot of other weird price rises.
Because of the increased use and production of Flexfuel.
Bio-Fuel.
bcoz it's usage is higher and higher day by day
the economy is crap. any and all forms of oil is going up lol
Classic example of Short-Run versus Long-Run economics. In the Short-Run suppliers of cooking oils cannot produce extra supply. They have many restrictions just by the nature of their product. For example the time it takes to plant their product and wait for it to grow and then be processed. So although demand is high the supply is short and prices rise. over the long-run though these producers should be able to react to the market and up their production.


However, there are other constraints such as the price of fuel as you mentioned. Yes it is true that worldwide price for gas has dropped but the effects of when it was higher have not gone away. The cooking oil producers were unable to afford the costs associated with producing their crop when fuel was rising so quickly and so had to scale back their production thus restricting the supply. Now that the prices have dropped you would think the supply would pop right back up but it goes back to their time contraints. They are now restricted by how long it actually takes to produce their product even though the price of gas has dropped it will take time for the supply of cooking oils to meet the demand.