The USDA’s latest food price forecast has a bit of good news for shoppers. Gary Crawford has more on This Land of Ours.
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USDA analysts say food prices at grocery stores will likely be higher this year than last year, but only by about 1%.
“And that’s compared to a 5% increase in food prices in 2023.” Despite the year being just a little more than halfway through, USDA economist Megan Schweitzer said, “We don’t expect a significant change in our forecast for the rest of the year. We’re narrowing down our forecast change in prices to around 1%. That’s been the case for the past two months.”
While overall grocery prices are expected to fall, some food categories are expected to be about 1% cheaper than fresh fruit was last year.
“And there are several other categories where we are predicting prices to fall in 2024: seafood, 0.8 percent, eggs, 0.3 percent,” Schweitzer said.
Milk and dairy products fell by almost 0.5 percent.
Sabrina Halvorson
National Correspondent / AgNet Media, Inc.
Sabrina Halvorson is an award-winning journalist, announcer and speaker specializing in agriculture. She primarily covers legislative issues and hosts The AgNet Weekly podcast. Sabrina is originally from California’s agricultural Central Valley.
