AFBF: Cost of Summer Cookout Reaches Record High
Volunteer Shoppers across the Country, including Farm Bureau Members and Others, Collected Data from Stores in Every State an
d Puerto Rico.
Families celebrating the Fourth of July holiday will continue to find stubbornly high prices at the grocery store. An Independence Day cookout will cost $71.22 for 10 guests this year, based on the 2024 American Farm Bureau Federation annual marketbasket survey.
The grocery bill is up 5% from 2023, and almost 30% from just five years ago. A $7.12 per-person cost represents a record high since AFBF began the survey in 2013. The cookout favorites include cheeseburgers, chicken breasts, pork chops, homemade potato salad, strawberries and ice cream, among other products.
“Higher prices at the grocery store reflect a number of challenges facing America’s families. Lower availability of some cookout staples and inflation are hitting people in their wallets,” said AFBF Chief Economist Roger Cryan. “Farmers are also feeling the effects of high prices. They’re price takers, not price makers. Their share of the retail food dollar is just 15%, but they still pay elevated fuel, fertilizer and other supply prices.”
The marketbasket survey shows a year-to-year double-digit increase in the cost of beef and lemonade, while there are drops in the cost of chicken breasts and potato salad.
The retail price for two pounds of ground beef increased 11% to $12.77. Lemonade will cost $4.19, up 12% from 2023. Several factors influence these increases, which reflect the sort of challenges farmers face on a regular basis. Drought conditions in recent years forced ranchers to sell many of their cattle early last year, reducing the amount of beef available for the summer grilling season. Higher lemon prices can be attributed to citrus greening, which has spread to California after devastating Florida’s citrus industry.
