If you've walked away from the check-out lately feeling like you've paid a lot for a handful of basic items, your instincts are spot on.
Grocery prices really have gone up and on Wednesday, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released the data to prove it.
It showed food and non-alcoholic beverage prices jumped a whopping 9 per cent in the year to September, helping push the overall inflation rate to 7.3 per cent, the steepest annual rise in 32 years.
When the ABS calculates its inflation rate, it does so by measuring the price of a basket of goods and services.
What goes into the "basket" changes all the time, in line with consumer preferences.
These days measuring the cost of goods in the basket involves "web scrapers" to collect online prices, as well as trained staff visiting shops in person.
So, while we can't tell you exactly what's in the ABS's basket of goods, we've come up with a few items we think might be in yours and looked at why they're costing more.
Milk
Milk is 12 cents a litre more expensive than it was this time last year, according to John Droppert, industry insights and analysis manager at Dairy Australia.
He said the average retail price of a litre of fresh milk for the year to October was $1.81, about 7.4 per cent higher than the year before, when it was $1.69.
Retail prices went up because there was less milk around.
The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics's September quarter dairy update explained why.
It found that "the size of the milk pool declined rapidly in the first half of the 2022 … driven by a drier-than-average start of the year in southern Victoria and north-west Tasmania as well as flooding in regions of Queensland and northern New South Wales".
"At the same time, export prices for Australian dairy products increased substantially at the start of 2022."
Given milk processors have already significantly increased the prices they're offering farmers this year and because global prices have softened, the retail price of milk should stabilise.
But as Dairy Farmers Australia president Rick Gladigau said, given how many crises have hit recently, looking further into the future shifts into the realm of "crystal balling".
Mince
The average retail price of mince is up about 8 per cent compared to this time last year, according to Scott Cameron from Meat and Livestock Australia.
He has previously explained to the ABC that good growing conditions, higher fuel and fertiliser costs, and strong overseas demand have all contributed to higher meat prices.
Looking ahead, he thinks a forecast increase in beef production could help supply issues.
"But we're also seeing strong demand for Australian beef trim, [the parts of an animal used for mince], particularly from the United States, which in turn may absorb much of this increase."
So essentially Australian farmers might soon be producing more meat but it might not help retail prices come down because some of it will head overseas.
Bread
With so many varieties and brands it's hard to pin down an average bread price.
But as Tanya Barden, chief executive of the Australian Food and Grocery Council points out, key bread-ingredient grain has increased in price significantly.
"The war in Ukraine has had an impact on global grain prices because they're a major supplier," she said.
For example, export milling wheat, the wheat used to make flour, is selling for $608 a tonne, up 39 per cent on the price this time last year.
But she said bread prices were also influenced by other factors.
"There's been a significant number of cost increases through COVID with operating factories through lockdowns and all the additional safety measures that have been put in," Ms Barden said.
"We're starting to see some increases in labour [costs] and then … oil prices, which have been at record highs globally, oil feeds through into packaging costs, plastic packaging costs.
"Then you've got to move the product around the supply chain and we've seen increases in freight charges, partly as a result of some of the domestic weather events through this year."
Ms Barden predicted inflation would increase over the coming months and might peak later this year but believed it would be at least a year before it was back down to the Reserve Bank's target range of 2-3 per cent.
Tea
Like many imported products, Ms Barden said tea would be affected by a weaker Australian dollar.
There were too many brands and varieties to pin down an average price but Ms Barden said, like many imported products, tea would be affected by a weaker Australian dollar.
"The low rate of the Australian dollar does mean that those imported goods are more expensive than they normally would be," she said.
Shaun Cousins, retail analyst at the investment bank UBS, said international products were also more affected by supply-chain issues, like congested transport routes, than locally produced goods.
"It's availability of [shipping] containers … it's availability of drivers, it's getting pallets; there are a variety of pressures that have emerged in the supply chain which are impacting the flow of goods," he said.
Overall he said recent price hikes for dry grocery products had been "amplified" because prices had been fairly stable for some time.
"We had a decade in the 2010s where there wasn't an enormous amount of food inflation," Mr Cousins said.
"So food companies do not have any choice but to pass on higher costs."
Potatoes
A 2-kilogram bag of potatoes costs about $7.50 at the moment, up 50 cents on what consumers normally pay, according to Renee Pye, a potato grower in South Australia's Mallee.
"Potatoes [have been] $7 for a 2kg bag, for like 11 years," she said.
Like most other food producers, she puts the 50 cent increase down to higher packaging, fuel, freight, fertiliser and labour costs.
"There's no extra fat on that, it's just to cover what we need," she said.
As to where potato prices will head, given the latest increase has been so long coming, Ms Pye doesn't think they'll increase again soon.
