11-28 NWR Food Prices

This is your Northwest report for Monday, November 28, I'm David Sparks and up until this week, Agriculture Department forecasters were holding out the possibility that retail food prices on average for 2016 might still end up higher than 2015 but not any more. USDA food price analyst Anne Marie Kuhn: "currently we are expecting to pay 1/4% less to 1 1/4% less."

Kuhn says having food prices overall turn out lower than a year before it is so rare, It seems hard to believe but (Song). The last time food prices in one year were lower than the year before was when the Monkeys hit "I'm a believer" was a top hit in 1967. Anne Marie Kuhn says this is a result of an extraordinary combination of things. Record large US livestock and crop production plus... "Lower oil and energy prices would decrease the cost of transportation and food processing and then we have also seen a very strong US dollar." Which makes imported food cheaper for us and makes our food products more expensive for other countries to buy leaving more supplies at our food stores.

Staying on the topic of pricing changes, agri-pulse.com is reporting the Energy Information Agency says prices for residential heating oil and propane are starting off at the same levels as last winter (October through March), when prices were the lowest in at least a decade.