Statewide Iowa — While Iowa farmers are still struggling with low commodity prices, Iowa consumers are seeing consistently lower prices at the grocery store.
A review from the U-S-D-A finds prices at the supermarket fell over the past several months, prompting agency ag analyst Annemarie Kuhns to recalculate her food price forecast for 2017.
That projected increase is tentative and she says prices could actually go down next year, though food prices haven’t decreased for two years in a row in 63 years. The U-S-D-A’s initial prediction for this year was that food prices would rise two-to-three percent from 2015, but they dropped about one-percent overall for the year. Kuhns says there was one big factor that resulted in the reduction of food prices, something that shook Iowa’s poultry industry.
Prices on a host of products at the grocery store fell in recent months and Kuhns says the trend should continue for many of those same products in 2017.
The U-S-D-A is also projecting several items will be more expensive in the year ahead, including: milk, chicken, bread, cereal, fish and prepared foods.
