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Farm Bureau: Thanksgiving dinner cost down for third straight year

Theresa Proudfit/Daily News photo SUSAN GERBER OF IRON MOUNTAIN shops for her Thanksgiving turkey at Super One Foods in Iron Mountain.

Families preparing for the Thanksgiving feast should have found better prices in the grocery store, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The Washington, D.C.-based agency’s 33rd annual survey of classic Thanksgiving dinner items calculated the average cost of supplies to feed 10 people at $48.90, or less than $5 per plate.

That represents a 22-cent decrease from the 2017 average of $49.12 and the third straight year of declines, as well as the lowest price for the meal since 2010, said John Newton, the AFBF’s chief economist.

The centerpiece of most Thanksgiving tables — the turkey — cost slightly less than last year, at $21.71 for a 16-pound bird, or about $1.36 per pound, down 3 percent from last year and the lowest turkey prices since 2014.

The Farm Bureau’s informal survey had on the menu turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, a veggie tray, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and coffee and milk, enough to serve 10 with leftovers.

Foods showing the largest decreases this year, in addition to turkey, included a gallon of milk, $2.92; a 3-pound bag of sweet potatoes, $3.39; a 1-pound bag of green peas, $1.47; and a dozen rolls, $2.25.

Several items saw prices rise modestly: cranberries, pumpkin pie mix and stuffing. A 12-ounce bag of fresh cranberries was $2.65; a 30-ounce can of pumpkin pie mix $3.33; a 14-ounce package of cubed bread stuffing was $2.87; two 9-inch pie shells came in at $2.47; and a 1-pound veggie tray was 75 cents.

A group of miscellaneous items — including coffee and ingredients necessary to prepare the meal, such as butter, evaporated milk, onions, eggs, sugar and flour — also was up slightly, to $3.01.

The price for a half-pint of whipping cream remained the same at $2.08.

The stable average price reported this year by Farm Bureau for a classic Thanksgiving dinner tracks with the government’s Consumer Price Index for food eaten at home. But while the most recent CPI report for food at home shows a 0.1 percent increase over the past year, the Farm Bureau survey shows a decline of less than 1 percent.

After adjusting for inflation, the cost of this year’s Thanksgiving dinner is $19.37, the most affordable in more than a decade.

New this year, to capture the diversity in Thanksgiving meals across the U.S., the AFBF also checked prices on a 4-pound bone-in ham, 5 pounds of russet potatoes and 1-pound of frozen green beans. That increased the overall cost slightly to $61.72, or about $6 per person, Newton said.

A total of 166 volunteer shoppers checked prices at grocery stores in 37 states for this year’s survey.

Farm Bureau also surveyed the price of a traditional Thanksgiving meal available from popular food delivery services. This revealed that the convenience of food delivery does have a larger price tag. A 16-pound turkey was nearly 50 percent more expensive at nearly $2 per pound when purchased from a food delivery service. Nearly every individual item was more expensive compared with the Farm Bureau average and the total cost of the dinner was about 60 percent higher at about $8 per person.

The AFBF Thanksgiving dinner survey was first conducted in 1986 and has remained unchanged since 1986 to allow for consistent price comparisons.

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