food costs

Consumers like the goals of regenerative agriculture, but they don’t want to pay more for food produced with the climate-friendly practices, said a Purdue University survey released on Wednesday.

Grocery prices will rise by a scant 0.7 percent in 2025, the smallest increase in seven years, said USDA analysts on Thursday in their first forecast of food inflation in the new year. Grocery price inflation was forecast at a below-normal 1 percent this year.

One in four Americans entered 2024 with a goal of changing their diet to improve their health or lose weight, according to a survey by Purdue University. “We see that the majority of consumers plan to limit processed foods in their diets, while fewer plan to follow more alternative diets such as vegetarian and vegan,” the survey said.

Congress should provide an additional $1 billion for the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program in January when it votes on funding for the USDA and several other federal departments, said Biden administration officials on Wednesday.

Americans opened their wallets to spend a record amount on food last year, even when inflation is considered, partly because they like the convenience of take-out and restaurant food, said two USDA economists. Outlays on food away from home grew by an inflation-adjusted 11 percent last year at the same time inflation was driving up prices.

A new partnership between the USDA and 31 states will “help lower food costs for American families while also giving farmers and ranchers more and better options,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack at the White House on Wednesday.

Wholesale egg prices are down more than $1 a dozen since hitting a record daily average price of $5.40 a dozen in the week before Christmas, said USDA economists in the monthly Livestock, Dairy and Poultry report.

Lower beef prices helped pull down the food inflation rate to an annualized 10.9 percent in October, the second month in a row of a decline, said the Labor Department in the Consumer Price Index report.

Grocery prices will rise an average of 11 percent this year, the largest year-on-year increase since 1974, when prices soared by a torrid 14.9 percent, said the USDA. The monthly Food Price Outlook said grocery inflation would ebb to a near-normal 2.5 percent in 2023.

Beef prices were 12 percent higher than a year ago, helping to drive overall food prices upward, said the Labor Department on Tuesday. The monthly Consumer Price Index report said food prices were 3.7 percent higher but the U.S. inflation rate slowed slightly in August.