The annual Farm Bureau survey finds the cost of a typical Thanksgiving dinner for ten people has dropped by two dollars this year.
The Iowa Farm Bureau’s director of agriculture analytics and research, Sam Funk, says the drop in overall meal cost comes as turkey fell 7% to around $1.21 per pound.
The other dishes include: stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls with butter, peas, cranberries, a veggie tray, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and coffee and milk.
Funk says the producers of some of the side dishes haven’t had the easiest year.
“Some of the dairy products — such as the whipped cream that might be going on that pumpkin pie — or you think about of some of these other products coming to the marketplace, overall it’s been a year of ups and downs, but overall it ends up being a more affordable Thanksgiving dinner,” he says.
Funk says some people like to have a ham for the holiday too — and they did a side survey on their cost and found no change. “While we may have an unchanged price for hams to go on the table, according to the survey, that’s still a pretty good factor to think about the recovery that the meat industry has been able to have — that they have enough hams through all this adversity through this pandemic to again put hams on your plate,” according to Funk.
Funk says the actual cost for the meal came in at $46.90, and says the inflation-adjusted price was lower than we have had in a very long time. “That’s a multiplied blessing for a lot of families.”
Funk says farmers have seen some recent increases in commodity prices, but he says they go into next year with concerns. “There’s still a lot of uncertainty as you look at it going forward. I think one of the aspects that we need to consider now and to be thankful for is the fact that we have an abundance of food in the United States,” Funk says. “We still have one of the lowest costs of food that you’ll find. The percentage of our disposable income that we will pay for food in the United States is frankly one of the lowest that you will find across the world.”
This is the 35th year the Farm Bureau has conducted its Thanksgiving dinner survey.