The Cost Thanksgiving Meal Lower This Year

The American Farm Bureau Federation has released its 2024 Thanksgiving cost survey highlighting trends in holiday meal prices. Economist, Bernt Nelson on the survey's findings and its impact on both producers and consumers. I

“It's really a Farm Bureau tradition now this is the 39th annual survey that we've done, and what we do here is we send the survey out. We get responses from all 50 states and Puerto Rico, from our volunteer shoppers that put together a market basket of goods for a Thanksgiving meal for 10 people. We collect this data to give kind of the audience or people, a sense of what the cost for a general Thanksgiving meal is. Now this is it's good for the Thanksgiving meal, but it also gives you kind of a snapshot of what the overall economy is looking like, especially with respect to food prices. Since food brings us all to the table around the holiday season. You know, from all across the world, people gather in this light, and it kind of puts together what things look like, you know, across the entire country, regionally and even on a state-by-state basis, the Farm Bureau Thanksgiving survey found that a meal for 10 costs $8.08, or $5.80, a person.”

That's 5% less than last year, according to Nelson, however, factoring in inflation, costs are nearly 20% higher than five years ago, despite a slight decline over the past two years, prices remain significantly elevated compared to pre-inflation levels.