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Farm Bureau survey indicates lower cost in Thanksgiving dinner

Lower prices for turkey, milk, rolls, and sweet potatoes have resulted in a decrease in the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Thanksgiving Dinner Survey.

John Newton, AFBF’s director of market intelligence, says the informal survey shows the cost of food items for a Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people was around $49, the lowest it has been since 2013.

He says the turkey, which is about 50 percent of the cost of the items in the survey, was lower this year at $22.

“Cold storage levels for turkeys for consumers that do purchase a frozen turkey for Thanksgiving, those inventory levels at the end of September were up 22 percent year over year and then we see turkey supplies go up- that’s why we saw the price of turkey fall,” he says.

He tells Brownfield the price of a gallon of milk is also lower at $2.99.

“When we look at dairy, what we saw in 2017 is that U.S. farmers are going to produce a record supply of milk  and that’s led to an abundant supply of milk across the country,” he says.

While those staples are lower, Newton says whole whipping cream jumped 4 percent at $2.08 this year.

“U.S. consumers are consuming more full-fat dairy products- things like whipping cream or full fat yogurt, cottage cheese, and butter,” he says. “We’ve seen cream supplies really tighten and that pushes the prices of those products higher.”

Other items on the shopping list that were higher this year were bread stuffing, cranberries, a veggie tray, and pumpkin pie.

About 140 shoppers in 39 states participated in the survey. AFBF conducts quarterly surveys of retail food prices. The series includes a spring picnic survey, a summer cookout survey, and a fall harvest marketbasket survey.

Audio: John Newton, American Farm Bureau Federation