HARRISBURG (TNS) — Al Schock of Waynesboro was shocked when he recently paid $8 for a dozen and a half of eggs at the grocery store.
“Cheese has gone up 20% and steaks have gone way up. I’m a farm boy. Meat and potatoes is all I eat,” he said while visiting the Pennsylvania Farm Show food court.
To afford groceries, he said he cuts back on other things.
“My former father-in-law said enjoy life and eat what you like in moderation. Don’t go overboard but just eat what you like and enjoy it,” he said.
For many like Schock, food inflation, while frustrating, has become a fact of life. According to the Consumer Price Index, prices have risen more than 25% since 2019, mostly due to rising operating costs, supply-chain disruptions, labor costs and corporate profits.
Gazing into the crystal ball, it’s hard to gauge whether or not consumers will notice any relief at the supermarket checkout in the new year. Generally speaking, food prices don’t drop.
“Once food price goes up, it tends to stay up,” said Claudia Sahm, a chief economist at New Century Advisors told CNBC. “The inflation may come back down, so you don’t see the big price increases. But outside of widespread depression, we don’t tend to see prices falling across the board.”
The United States Department of Agriculture says food prices are expected to rise by about 2%.
Representatives of Pennsylvania’s agricultural industry say high prices are likely here to stay and uncertainties surrounding the political climate make it even harder to predict.
“I’m not an economist, but I don’t think there is going to be any short-term fix to it all,” said Chris Herr, executive vice president for PennAg Industries.
Kyle Grim of Beaver Creek Angus in East Berlin said he’s not convinced prices will go back to pre-COVID levels. From his perspective, all of the United States has enjoyed extremely low food prices for a very long time. He noted nearly everything including pickup trucks costs more now.
“If food prices go up a little bit, we’re still going to spend the least amount of our income on food compared to the rest of the world. Like anything else, everything has gone up,” Grim said.
Nationally, he said beef prices have ticked upwards mostly due to a shortage of cattle inventory.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost of a pound of 100% ground beef in November 2024 was $5.62, up from $5.10 a year earlier.
PennAg’s Herr said he doesn’t expect relief until energy prices possibly drop, noting the two go hand-in-hand. He said some of it hinges on what President-elect Donald Trump does.
“Trump has put himself out there. I have to think one of the things Americans are going to measure is food and energy prices. So will there be some concerted effort to address some of the needs that will directly impact those couple of things?” Herr said.
Lowering prices was a major tenant of Trump’s campaign but he admitted in December to Time magazine it will be difficult to do and likely only happen through lower energy costs and supply chain improvements.
“Look, they got them up. I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard,” Trump said.
Trump’s sweeping tariff pledge is also a factor in the equation. The President-elect has proposed 10% on global imports and 60% on Chinese goods, plus a 25% import surcharge on Canadian and Mexican products.
Herr said tariffs make him nervous and he hopes it has more to do with posturing with various countries. During Trump’s first administration, he said the industry was unfairly criticized over the rhetoric and some of the promises.
“So I think there’s some nervousness about what that looks like,” Herr said.
Tariffs implemented during the first Trump administration resulted in apple sales to India drying up, said Corey McCleam, president of the State Horticulture Association and owner of Cherry Hill Orchards in Lancaster.
He said it led to overproduction of apples in the United States, mostly grown in Washington state.
Looking ahead, McCleam predicts apple prices likely will come down, although priced at about $2 a pound they remain inexpensive compared to other foods.
“I think you will find in the next couple of years, you will see the apple prices level off unless something happens in the industry,” he said.
Prices on another commodity, eggs, have been creeping back up because of shortages due to the nationwide avian influenza outbreak. According to the USDA, prices have risen 63% over the last year.
Recent cases of “the bird flu” have been reported in Ohio and Indiana. There are no live cases in Pennsylvania. Since the outbreak started in 2022, the USDA reports more than 130 million birds, including wild aquatic birds, commercial poultry and backyard or hobbyist flocks, have been impacted.
“It’s a perfect storm,” Herr said. “It’s a supply and demand issue more than anything and it continues.”
Even the popular Farm Show foods are not immune to price hikes.
The Pennsylvania Dairymen’s Association raised milkshake prices to $7, up $1 over last year.
Dave Smith, the association’s executive director, said the price hike hasn’t impacted sales. The association is a nonprofit and Farm Show sales are the group’s biggest fundraiser, with proceeds benefiting programs such as the state’s dairy princesses and mobile ag labs.
In the past nine years, Smith said the association has raised about $4.5 million.
He said inflation is to blame for the price hike, the first in two years. There were a lot of discussions and I had a lot of opinions, Smith said, adding, “It’s hard.”
