food costs

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.

The U.S. food system costs at least $3.2 trillion a year when the impact on human health, livelihoods and the environment is added to the $1.1 trillion paid each year for food, said a report by the Rockefeller Foundation. Most of the additional $2.1 trillion comes from the cost of obesity and …