Lower Food Prices

That was a Chubby Checker song from 1962 called Limbo Rock and those lines might have been prophetic to the USDA's new forecast for food prices this year. Annemarie Kuhns, USDA food price economist, tracks retail food prices for the Department of Agriculture and it has been a downhill slide for her monthly forecast. When the year began, she was projecting food prices to go up 2 to 3% this year but instead, as most of us know, they are gone the other way, either staying the same or declining for seven out of the first nine months of this year. "For 2016 we are now predicting supermarket prices could decrease as much as .75% and increases much as .25%." That is down from her forecast of just a month ago and it increases the chances that this year will bring overall grocery store prices down from last year. The last time we food shoppers saw food prices go down year-to-year, 1967. Kuhn says not to look for a repeat performance in 2017. She’s currently expecting prices to rise between one and 2%.