Cathy Isom has some good news for consumers when it comes to how much your Thanksgiving meal will cost you this year. That’s coming up on “This Land of Ours.”
Download Cost of Thanksgiving Meal
The cost of a Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people is a little bit cheaper this year compared to last year. Just under 50-dollars according to the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual Thanksgiving dinner survey.
Menu items including turkey, bread stuffing, cranberries, pumpkin pie and all the trimmings, decreased by less than 1 percent this year to $49.87 for a meal for 10 people. A-F-B-F economist Dr. John Newton says the decline confirms the quality of the U-S food supply.
“I think this year’s survey results reveal what we’ve all known about food prices here in America and that is that U.S. consumers have access to an abundant high-quality and low-cost food supply. We spend about 10 percent of our income on food and this year’s survey confirms that. It comes in at less than $50 for the Thanksgiving dinner, and that’s less than $5 per person.”
He says lower milk and turkey prices led to the decrease in this year’s survey.
“We’ve seen milk prices come down quite a bit from where they were in 2014. Turkey supply has adjusted from 2015 levels, and those two factors have contributed to a lower price for this basket of goods.”
Finally, he says the increase in turkey supply means there are plenty of turkeys to go around this Thanksgiving Day.
“In 2016 there are plenty of turkeys available. U.S. producers have responded from the bird flu outbreak of 2015 and USDA estimates that the turkey supply is up about 8 percent from where we were last year.”