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Food retail prices increased in March.

Dairy and egg prices rose faster than they have since 1983.

Egg and dairy prices have gone up more quickly than they have in the past.

Cole Burston took the photo.

The price of butter, cheese and pasta has gone up the most in 13 years, according to Statistics Canada.

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The year-over-year increase in food retail prices in March was the highest since 2009. The consumer price inflation for March was higher than the jump in food.

The prices of dairy and egg have gone up faster than in the past. The supply of wheat is tight due to last summer's extreme dry spell in Western Canada, and pasta rose by 17.8 per cent in March.

The price of breakfast cereals rose more than 12 per cent in the last year, the biggest increase since 1990, as wheat futures hit a 14-year high, according to Statistics Canada.

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In the dairy industry, rising costs of fuel,fertilizer, ingredients and transportation have had a cascading effect.

The Dairy Commission of Canada, the federal body that controls farm-gate milk prices under Canada's supply management regime, announced an 8.4-per-cent increase in the price that dairy companies pay farmers for their milk in February. The CDC said the increase was meant to account for higher fuel, feed and fertilizer costs.

  1. Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem said he's prepared for rates to go above three per cent to get the consumer price index back to its two per cent target.
  2. Canada's annual inflation rate accelerated to 6.7 per cent in March.
  3. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce's latest quarterly survey of business conditions suggests companies are struggling to absorb higher costs and will end up raising their own prices to recoup them.
  4. A selection of artisanal cheese at the production facility of Fromagerie Fritz Kaiser in Noyan, Que.

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The price increases of the processors were of their own. Lactalis Canada Inc., which is part of the French dairy giant Lactalis, increased its prices on groceries by up to 15 per cent to account for the CDC's milk.

Canada's big grocery chains say they're under pressure from suppliers to pay more for shipments of products, but some have been pushing back, resulting in public disputes that have stripped product off shelves. The global confectioner stopped shipping its products to the supermarket chain after they refused to pay more for them. The situation played out again when Frito-Lay stopped shipping its products to stores in Canada because of a price dispute.

Email: jedmiston@postmedia.com

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