25 Years of the Thanksgiving Survey

25 Years of the Thanksgiving Survey

25 Years of the Thanksgiving Survey. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Last week on a trip to the grocery store my wife and I started checking on all the items we would need for this year's Thanksgiving Day meal and while it has changed some over the years the basic meal remains the same. For the last 25 years the American Farm Bureau has done a survey of that basic meal and will soon release the 2010 survey results of how much the average Thanksgiving dinner will cost. Marsha Purcell, AFBF's director of membership and program development, talks about how it all started. Purcell: We'll I've always been interested in engaging consumers in what we're doing in agriculture and that was one of the ways I thought we could really reach out to people who might not understand food and where it came from and have them have a better understanding of what it costs to purchase the food. Many times in the shopping cart there were a lot of things other than food items and that was one of the other messages we were trying to deliver. The Thanksgiving survey tracks the average prices of a turkey and all the basic fixings submitted by independent shoppers nationwide. Purcell says the survey is just as relevant today as it was 25 years ago. Purcell: Anytime we go to the grocery store it becomes relevant when we pay for the groceries at the check-out line and if we're having the meal at our house that could be even more important because usually that purchase is going to be bigger than your normal weekly purchase. So I think it's relevant for consumers to see what the meal actually costs. It is a basic Thanksgiving meal. It's not a lot of fancy additional items but it is the basic meal if you were going to go to a supermarket and have them prepare it and you go pick it up, it's basically the meal you would get there. Purcell says the survey has seen some changes in the past 25 years. Purcell: One of the things we've seen is that packaging has changed so it's harder sometimes to buy the same sized turkey that was easy to purchase then, they're either smaller or they're larger, and also the size of the stuffing mix or some of the other things in the survey are not in the same sized packages they were 25 years ago so we've had to adjust for that. She talks about the popularity of the Thanksgiving survey. Purcell: It took awhile for it to catch on and for groups to understand we were going to continue the survey, so I think each year we saw the popularity increase some. I really had no idea at that point that 25 years later we'd still be talking about the Thanksgiving Day survey. Purcell talks about the importance of the Thanksgiving meal. Purcell: Thanksgiving Day is a time to be grateful for the bounty we enjoy. Yes times are hard and for many us the budget is a little tighter, but we still live in a country that we have bountiful food and we have shelter and we have a lot to be thankful for and this meal is just one time we can be appreciative for what we have. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
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