Don't believe that jive turkey, pork prices are actually up 30%!

Is this going to be another "blame it on the interruption of the supply chain" kinda story?

How about instead a story about how discounting and giving away turkeys for years shut down producers?

That's a more interesting take because I sure am powerful tired of hearing about supply chain issues. I get that it's a major obstruction for transferring goods. But killing and processing turkeys seem like a pretty short supply chain.  Clearly, COVID is impacting willing worker availability and is still giving those unwilling to work, a reason to stay home.  But today's rising price of turkey has its origin going years back to the plummeting price of poultry.  What say you Wells Fargo? 

“The turkey price in 2021 is starkly higher compared to prior years,” Wells Fargo analysts wrote. “Late September turkey prices this year are running nearly 25% more than the prior year, and nearly 50% higher than a prior five-year average.

Reason being, that although many items have been in short supply over the last year and a half, turkey numbers have been declining for many years...yet the prices kept going down.

“The steady decline in production in the last five years resulted from several years of challenging economic conditions,” the report reads. “Some U.S. whole-bird turkey production shut down in 2019 and 2020.”

Turkeys at Thanksgiving are generally the major draw at the dinner table.  Having the turkey means you also buy all the fixin's and the higher margins the stores make on all the extras. So to attract the Thanksgiving shoppers, stores offered turkeys at incredible discounts and you may remember a time when stores were just giving them away with qualifying purchases.

So it's true to say prices are up 25% versus last year, they've actually gone up 50% versus five years ago.

So turkeys seemed to have bottomed out on their own but surely today's price of shipping isn't helping a bit.

Let's not forget the drought.  According to the Department of Agriculture on Friday...

Turkey is more expensive largely because the price of corn, which most commercial turkeys feed on, more than doubled in some parts of the country from July 2020 to July 2021. Whole frozen birds between eight and 16 pounds already cost 25 cents a pound more than they did a year ago.

But Bacon still rules supreme when it comes to skyrocketing prices.  This smokey salty delight has jumped 30% since this same time in 2020. Industry experts don't expect more moderate pricing until 2022.

At these prices make sure you're making good use of all your leftovers.


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