WASHINGTON, Nov. 27, 2012 – Food prices will continue to increase through 2013, according to the food price outlook report released by the USDA last Friday.
Economists expect food prices to rise 3 to 4 percent, putting price inflation well above the normal 2.5 percent. The increase is “due almost entirely to the drought,” Ricky Volpe, an economist at the USDA Economic Research Service, explained in a USDA radio report.
Meat and other animal-based products will be mostly responsible for the spike, “basically the result of increased feed prices,” Volpe said. Wheat and other farm commodity prices have also been affected by the record-breaking drought.
The complete food price index data can be found here.
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