Thanksgiving Dinner Costs Fall Again | Market Intel

Americans stocking up on this year’s Thanksgiving dinner will see a dip in their grocery bills for the second year in a row. The 39th^th he annual American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) Thanksgiving dinner survey shows that the classic feast for 10 will set you back $58.08, down 5% from last year. However, it is still 19% higher than five years ago. While consumers are getting some much-needed relief after years of increased retail prices, these grocery bills also reflect some tough conversations around the dinner table for farm and ranch families.

Thanksgiving Dinner Survey

For one week each year, volunteer shoppers from all 50 states and Puerto Rico visit their local grocery store (or the local store’s website) to research the prices of items used in a classic Thanksgiving feast. Since 1986, these volunteers have collected price data on turkey, stuffing cubes, sweet potatoes, dinner rolls, frozen peas, fresh cranberries, celery, carrots, pumpkin pie mix and crusts, whipped cream, and whole milk.

The classic midday grocery bill is a mixed bag of savings and squeezes. Seven items dropped in price this year, including turkey, sweet potatoes, frozen peas, a vegetable tray with carrots and celery, pumpkin pie mix, pie crusts and whole milk. But the remaining four items – dinner rolls, fresh cranberries, whipped cream and cubed filling – rose in price.

Prices for ham, russet potatoes and frozen green beans were added to the 2018 survey to reflect several Thanksgiving favorites, all of which showed a year-over-year reduction in price. When including the extra items, the meal price rose to $77.34, or $7.73 per person, with more leftovers, of course. The updated Thanksgiving dinner nearly doubled the cost savings of the classic basket—an 8.7% drop in price from 2023.

Turkey – Cutting the grocery bill

During the AFBF Thanksgiving survey, turkey accounted for an average of 43% of total dinner costs. This year is just around the corner – a 16-pound turkey accounts for 44.2% of the classic 10-person feast. Given its large share of the total dinner bill, year-over-year differences in the grocery bill closely track the change in turkey prices. This year’s 6% drop in turkey prices is a bit of an anomaly. According to the USDA’s Turkeys Raised reportfarmers raised 205 million turkeys by 2024, down 6% from last year and the lowest since 1985. Highly pathogenic bird flu is responsible for the decline in farmed turkeys. Typically, fewer turkeys would mean an increase in price, but demand for turkey decreased in 2024. USDA discretion per capita demand for turkey is 13.9 pounds per person, down one pound from 2023. This drop in demand has caused prices to drop.

The rest of the Thanksgiving dinner table

Most ingredients in our survey dropped in price, including fresh vegetables and the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving table, the turkey. Overall vegetable price volatility dragged down fresh vegetable prices, including celery and carrot bowl prices. Favorable weather conditions for dairy cows and feedstuffs led to a 14% drop in the price of a gallon of whole milk. It is important to note that milk prices varied considerably between regions across the country.

The biggest increases in your Thanksgiving dinner bill this year come from processed foods. Dinner rolls and cubed stuffing both increased by over 8% from 2023. Non-food inflation and labor shortages have driven up costs for partners throughout the food supply chain.

Fresh cranberries had the second largest price increase of 12%. This is a stabilization of prices after a significant 18% drop in prices from 2022 to 2023. Despite the year-over-year price increase, cranberries are still more affordable than historical averages. In fact, when adjusted for inflation, this is the lowest price for cranberrysince 1987.

Regional differences – more than clothing vs. filling

Thanksgiving staples and what you call them aren’t the only things that vary as you move across the United States. For those celebrating in the West, your grocery bill will be at least 15% steeper than the rest of the country: $67.81 for a party of 10. The other regions of the US are lower by $9 or more. Southern diners will cost the least at $56.81, closely followed by the Northeast at $57.36 and $58.90 in the Midwest.

When looking at the expanded Thanksgiving basket, the West also has a distinction from the rest of the country. The South, Northeast, and Midwest can add ham, russet potatoes, and green beans for a total basket of $81.07, $81.37, and $83.03, respectively. However, the expanded Thanksgiving basket in the West costs $94.09, over a dollar more per item. person.

The cost of food

Although the price tag for this year’s Thanksgiving meal is down 5%, it’s still up nearly 20% from just five years ago. Consumers are exhausted from years of inflation, and it will take more than the past two years of improvements to ease the pain. However, these declines reflect the greater affordability of food in the United States. Rising grocery bills can be a bit of a shock, but food inflation is a fraction of the increases that hit other expenses. From October 2023 to 2024, food at home prices generally rose only 1.1 per cent.half of the overall economy’s 2.6% increase in prices. Other bills that could see even bigger spikes include transport (up 8.2%), housing (up 4.9%) and electricity (up 4.5%). When adjusted for inflation—or if your dollar had the same overall purchasing power as a consumer in 1984, just before the beginning of this study—this would be the cheapest Thanksgiving meal in the 39-year history of the AFBF Thanksgiving study, other than the outlier in 2020. Even with the declining purchasing power of the dollar, some of the items in our basket are at their long-term lowest prices, even in “current dollar” price terms. Cranberries are the second lowest, after only last year’s big price drop since 2015.

We can also look at affordable food in terms of wages. American consumers spent 6.7% of their spending on food in 2022including food eaten away from home or takeaway, the lowest percentage in the world. In comparison, the food share of expenditure is 8.5% in the United Kingdom, 16.2% in Brazil and up to 59% in developing countries such as Nigeria.

The average American also has to work fewer hours to buy the same meal than in previous years. Wages continued to grow faster after the COVID-19 pandemic, even as inflation cooled. Because average wages increased 4% from 2023 to 2024, it took us 9% less work time to pay for this year’s Thanksgiving dinner.

Back on the farm

While consumers see some signs of price stability at retail, farmers are experiencing lower and more volatile prices at the farm gate. And like consumers, they are also victims of inflation as their production costs have skyrocketed over the past few years. USDA projects national net agricultural income will decrease by $6.5 billion by 2024.

In short, farmers are prize winners, takes on the greater price volatility that gives the food supply price stability. On average 9.3 cents of every dollar spent on food goes back to the farmer who produces it; but this proportion varies from product to product. When produce is less processed, a greater portion of each dollar goes back to the farmer, and consumers also experience more of the price variation that the farmer faces. Examples include products such as meat, milk and vegetables, which tend to have greater price variations at the grocery store, giving consumers a taste of the price fluctuations experienced by farmers.

Thank you for supporting farms

The farmers and ranchers who grow the food on your table this Thanksgiving face many challenges. Low crop prices, poor growing weather, disasters such as recent hurricanes and changing international markets all threaten farmers’ livelihoods. Congress has historically provided help in the form of the farm bill and, in extraordinary situations, disaster relief. The latest farm bill expired this fall, already six years old and out of date; and disaster relief in recent years has been short and severely delayed, hampering the recovery of farmers and rural areas. This support, when timely and effective, is one of the most important tools for keeping America’s food supply safe, affordable and secure.

Conclusion

According to AFBF’s National Thanksgiving Survey, this year’s Thanksgiving meal will cost consumers about 5% less this year, though it’s still nearly 20% higher than just five years ago. The long road to reduced inflation has exhausted many Americans, including farm families who have been squeezed between falling prices for their output and higher prices for their inputs. Farmers shoulder a large portion of the food system’s risk to help keep food abundant and affordable. When times get tough, they’ve relied on a strong farm bill (and effective assistance when disaster strikes) to help them stay in business.