MILAN, Italy - Be it fettuccine, linguine or spaghetti, Italians will soon be paying up to 20 per cent more for their pasta.
Consumer groups are calling for a one-day pasta strike Thursday -- not against eating it, but against buying it -- to protest the increase. But producers say the strike targeting Italy's national dish is wrongheaded because the price is linked to a global rise in the cost of grain.
Pasta is an Italian staple, entwined with the national identity. It's not uncommon for families to discuss which pasta best fits that day's sauce -- tubular penne, twisty rigatoni or flat linguine. The average Italian eats about 62 pounds of pasta a year, on a peninsula so far untouched by low-carb diet crazes.
"There is no dish that costs less," said Furio Bragagnolo, the vice president of the Italian pasta manufacturers association. "Whoever decides to strike against pasta will spend more on whatever they buy instead. A plate of pasta probably costs less than an apple."
The increase in the price of pasta is being driven by rising wheat prices worldwide, economists and producers say.
The demand for wheat is the result of several trends, chiefly an increasing demand for biofuels, which can be made from wheat, and improved diets in emerging countries where putting more meat on the table is raising the demand for feed for livestock, said Francesco Bertolini, an economist at Milan's Bocconi University.
As a result, wheat stocks worldwide are being depleted and grain prices are soaring. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday that U.S. stockpiles are at their lowest level in 33 years.
Italy produces only about half of the high-protein durum wheat used to make high-quality pasta and bread; the rest is imported from overseas markets, including the United States, Canada and Ukraine.
On the Bologna market, for example, the cost of a pound of durum flour has risen in just the last two months from 16 cents to 28 cents, Bragagnolo said. And durum flour constitutes 70 per cent of the cost of producing pasta.
Similarly, the December wheat contract, the largest futures contract, closed just shy of US$9 a bushel Tuesday on the Chicago Board of Trade, up from about $5 a bushel roughly four months ago.
In the Italian supermarket, that will translate by the end of the year into an increase of 16-19 cents on a 1-pound package, which now typically runs from 83 cents to $1.25, Bragagnolo said.
Even at higher prices, Bragagnolo said the cost of a portion of pasta -- about 4 ounces, excluding sauce, of course -- will be only about 23 cents.
While consumer groups raised the alarm about the price increase, few shoppers in supermarkets were taking notice.
"I'm not so bothered because it's not such a drastic increase, and anyway it involves a type of food that continues to have a low price," said Gabriele D'Angelo, a police officer shopping in Rome on Wednesday.
Those who are mostly likely to be concerned, producers say, are those on a fixed income, such as 70-year-old Francesca Sanfelice. "The price increase will affect how I shop. Already, I'm buying less bread, which is helping me lose weight," she laughed.
Such worldwide producers as De Cecco -- which sells pasta in more than 80 countries -- expect little fluctuation in their market overall as a result of the price increases and even less impact from the strike -- noting that consumers tend to buy pasta four to five pounds at a time.
"It's a symbolic strike, which will have no impact," said De Cecco's commercial director Luciano Berardi. "To say not to eat pasta would be a call to arms. It's the least expensive dish there is."
