Which detail from the text best supports the inference that many Elizabethans could not afford to buy grain during some years? . . . Francis Bacon proudly declares that England can now afford to feed other nations as well as her own people. Other bad years—when the price of grain is 20 percent or more above the rolling average—are 1573, 1586, and 1600. The year 1590 is almost as bad, made worse by the high cost of livestock. Prices for animal products hit new heights and never really diminish.