Holiday cookout costs 17% more than a year ago
Those who suspected the grocery bill was costing a lot more to bring a lot less home can rest assured, it wasn’t just your imagination.
Shoppers with the nation’s largest farm organization proved it outright: The cost of food, for the first time in decades, shot up almost 20% since this time last year, analysts with the American Farm Bureau Federation discovered this week as part of the organization's regular market basket surveys.
More specifically, if you planned to fire up the grill this Fourth of July weekend, you’ll need an extra $10 to even think about getting the same number of food items as you did in 2021, the AFBF study showed.
That’s after prices leapt about 17%, on average, down the grocery store aisle in the last few months.
U.S. consumers will pay $69.68 for their favorite Independence Day cookout foods, including cheeseburgers, pork chops, chicken breasts, homemade potato salad, strawberries and ice cream, based on a new AFBF market basket survey.
The average cost of a summer cookout for 10 people is $69.68, which breaks down to less than $7 per person. The overall cost for the cookout is up 17%, or about $10, from this same time last year, the result of ongoing supply chain disruptions, inflation and the war in Ukraine.
Farmers getting rich?
Farmers are feeling the price-point pain too, like the people they grow food for, according to AFBF Chief Economist Roger Cryan.
Despite higher food prices, the supply chain disruptions and inflation have made farm supplies more expensive; like consumers, farmers are price-takers not price-makers, Cryan said.
“Bottom line, in many cases the higher prices farmers are being paid aren’t covering the increase in their farm expenses,” he said. “The cost of fuel is up, and fertilizer prices have tripled.”
Cryan also pointed to the cascading effects of the war in Ukraine, as that country’s contributions to global food security are cut off, Russian and Belarusian fertilizer exports are constrained, and some other countries pull back exports to protect their domestic supplies.
The market basket survey shows the largest year-to-year price increase was for ground beef.
Survey results showed the retail price for 2 pounds of ground beef at $11.12, up 36% from last year. Meanwhile, the Agriculture Department’s Producer Price Index indicates that compared to a year ago, farm-level cattle prices are up 17.5%, but wholesale beef prices are down 14%.
That particular cost scenario highlights the differences between farm-level, wholesale and retail beef prices and how the events of the last few years have had significant impacts on the beef production and cattle pricing cycles, making them all hard to predict.
Several other foods in the survey, including chicken breasts, pork chops, homemade potato salad, fresh-squeezed lemonade, pork & beans, hamburger buns and cookies, also increased in price.
On the flip side, the average retail price for strawberries declined by 86 cents compared to a year ago. Sliced cheese and potato chips also dropped in price, 48 cents and 22 cents, respectively.
Better weather conditions in some fruit-growing regions and greater retailer pricing flexibility for processed products are the likely drivers behind the modest price declines for these items.
The year-to-year direction of the market basket survey tracks with the federal government’s Consumer Price Index report for food at home and general inflation across the economy. Both the index and the market basket show increases of more than 10% compared to year-ago levels.
“According to the Agriculture Department’s revised Food Dollar Series, farmers currently receive approximately 8% of every food marketing dollar,” Cryan said. “The farmers’ share of the retail food dollar is as low as 2% to 4% for highly processed foods such as bread and cereal and can be 35% or more for some fresh products.”
AFBF President Zippy Duvall said the higher price at the grocer will impact food security the world over.
“The increased cost of food and supplies is a very real concern in our country and across the globe. U.S. food assistance programs and food banks help those who struggle to make ends meet here at home, but the story is much different around the globe as food insecurity skyrockets. The big impact of a single event in Ukraine shows how dependent the world is on stable, productive agriculture.”
About the study
The July 4th cookout survey is part of the Farm Bureau market basket series, which also includes the popular annual Thanksgiving Dinner cost survey of common food staples Americans use to prepare meals at home.
Data for this year’s survey was collected by 176 volunteer shoppers across the country and in Puerto Rico, including Farm Bureau members and others.
Included on everyone’s shopping list was the following:
2 pounds of ground beef, $11.12 (+36%)
2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, $8.99 (+33%)
32 ounces of pork & beans, $2.53 (+33%)
3 pounds of center cut pork chops, $15.26 (+31%)
2.5 quarts of fresh-squeezed lemonade, $4.43 (+22%)
2.5 pounds of homemade potato salad, $3.27 (+19%)
8 hamburger buns, $1.93 (+16%)
Half-gallon of vanilla ice cream, $5.16 (+10%)
13-ounce bag of chocolate chip cookies, $4.31 (+7%)
2 pints of strawberries, $4.44 (-16%)
1 pound of sliced cheese, $3.53 (-13%)
16-ounce bag of potato chips, $4.71 (-4%)
AFBF is the nation’s largest general farm organization with member families in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Learn more at http://facebook.com/FarmBureau or follow @FarmBureau on Twitter or @farmbureau on Instagram.