sholthouse@post-journal.com

A recent study by the New York State Farm Bureau shows that inflation has caused the average price of Thanksgiving dinner to increase by 26% this year.

The state Farm Bureau’s 2022 Market Basket Survey is an informal survey of volunteer shoppers for consumers to use as a guide for their holiday dinner shopping. It serves as a guide for comparison shopping and to gauge prices for the most popular dinner items.

The survey shows the average total price of food typically found in a Thanksgiving meal this year — which includes a 16-pound turkey and other common items found on a holiday dinner table — is $66.39, about a 26% increase over last year’s price of $52.59.

As Thanksgiving approaches, the price of turkey is expected to decrease, reflecting sales in the final days before the holiday. The survey revealed that the price has increased over the last year in nearly every category, except for fresh cranberries, which saw a 30-cent decrease, with the most notable increases being for stuffing mix, brown-and-serve rolls, and frozen pie crusts.

This year’s increase did not come as a surprise to Steve Ammerman, state Farm Bureau director of communications.

“Inflation is a concern across the board for New Yorkers, and the survey reflects what we’ve been seeing in the stores for months,” Ammerman said. “It did not come as a surprise that the Thanksgiving dinner would cost more this year. It will be more difficult for some families to afford, but we encourage comparison shopping to find the best deals. We also expect shoppers to choose more store brand items and purchase frozen items over fresh to save money.”

According to the state Farm Bureau, the increase is also reflective of many things globally at the moment, including continued supply and demand issues, higher commodity prices because of the war in Ukraine, as well as the increased costs for packaging and transportation. Despite these increases, most of the increased costs are not seen by the farmer who receives only about 8 cents of each dollar consumers spend on food at the store. The rest goes to pay for things like marketing, processing, and transportation of the food, Ammerman said.

“Higher turkey prices are the bulk of the overall increase because of a two percent drop in supply nationally combined with higher feed costs,” he said. “Inflation has also pushed up the cost of transportation and processing as well, making overall food prices more expensive.”

And yet, while the costs of not only Thanksgiving dinner but several other food items in the grocery stores continue to increase, New York state still has one of the most affordable food supplies in the world available to them.

Ammerman said it could be a lot worse.

“It is important to put the higher costs into perspective,” he said. “It still averages to a little more than $6 per person for a family of 10. We have one of the cheapest food supplies compared to other countries and that is in large part due to efficiency and the hard work of our family farms.”