(WWJ) -- Expect the cost of your turkey dinner to inflate along with your stomach this Thanksgiving.
The average cost of this year’s holiday feast for 10 is $53.31, which is a 14% increase from last year’s average of $46.90, according to Farm Bureau’s 36th annual survey.
Farm Bureau’s informal survey looked at prices of turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, a veggie tray, pumpkin pie with whipped cream and coffee with milk – all in appropriate quantities to serve a family of 10 with plenty of leftovers.
The Thanksgiving staple that went up most in price is the centerpiece on practically all dinner tables -- the turkey. The average cost for a 16-pound turkey is $23.99, about $1.50 per pound, which is up 24% from last year.
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This survey, although, was conducted two weeks before most grocery stores sharply lower the prices of frozen birds, so you should be able to secure a turkey at a lower cost than the survey’s average.
The average per-pound price for whole frozen turkeys was $1.07 the week of Nov. 5 and 88 cents the week of Nov. 12, a decline of 18% in just one week.
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Turkey isn’t the only holiday staple going up in price, though -- the side dishes are, too.
A pack of two frozen pie crusts is up 20% from last year, a 12-ounce bag of fresh cranberries is up 11% and one dozen dinner rolls are up 15%.
Even if you take turkey out of the equation, all of the items on the survey’s shopping list still leave you with a 6.6% price increase compared to last year, which tracks closely with the Consumer Price Index for food and general inflation across the economy.
“Every sector of the American economy is feeling the effects of inflation,” said Michigan Farm Bureau Senior Industry Relations Specialist Ernie Birchmeier. “The cost of fuel and a limited labor supply are playing a role in the larger issue, and those factors have a significant impact on agriculture. While the prices for Thanksgiving meal staples rose sharply in the past year, farmers still only receive about 8 cents per dollar spent on food, while facing skyrocketing costs for feed and fertilizer.”
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This inflation can also be tied to the trend of consumers cooking and eating at home due to the pandemic, which led to increased supermarket demand and higher retail food prices in 2020 and 2021, compared to pre-pandemic prices in 2019, according to Farm Bureau.
“Several factors contributed to the increase in average cost of this year’s Thanksgiving dinner,” said American Farm Bureau Federation Senior Economist Veronica Nigh. “These include dramatic disruptions to the U.S. economy and supply chains over the last 20 months; inflationary pressure throughout the economy; difficulty in predicting demand during the COVID-19 pandemic and high global demand for food, particularly meat.”
Farm Bureau's 2021 national average cost was calculated using 218 surveys completed with pricing data from all 50 states and Puerto Rico.
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