A traditional Thanksgiving meal will cost a Texas family about $46.50 this year, 30 cents less than last year. That’s according to the Texas Farm Bureau. To measure that, the TFB totals the cost of all the meal’s staples – turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes. This is the second year in a row these food prices have fallen.
Texas A&M agricultural economist Marco Palma says that has a lot to do with falling energy prices. “Essentially everything we do in agriculture is touched by the energy sector one way or another.”
He says fuel and energy impacts everything from livestock feed costs, to food transportation. And while he says the number of fruits and vegetables Texas consumes are increasingly imported, “The amount of grain that we’ve had the last couple years has certainly made the agricultural sector a little bit stronger.”
That increased supply could help lower prices as well.
But if you’re making pie, you might want to skip pecan. Price for the nuts went up 11 percent this year. Marco Palma says that’s due to increased demand from the Chinese market.
