The latest Consumer Price Index report covering March shows food price inflation at the grocery store grinding to a halt. Gary Crawford has more.
PARTICIPANTS: Gary Crawford and USDA economist, Megan Sweitzer.
Transcript
The government's consumer price index for March has been getting a lot of serious attention, serious press, because it showed an unexpectedly high rate of annual inflation, three and a half percent in the general economy, and it recorded a fairly high one month increase of six-tenths of one percent.
However, experts say unlike during the COVID pandemic when food prices were soaring, you cannot blame this new run of inflation on food.
In fact, food at home or grocery prices were actually flat in March.
No increase at all.
This from Agriculture Department economist Megan Schweitzer, who told us, "Overall, we continue to see inflation slow or stabilize across both of the major categories of food for groceries and restaurant products.
And so while food prices are still increasing, particularly on the restaurant side, food is not one of the major contributors to inflation on an economy-wide scale in March."
Not at all.
Overall, what was really driving price increases across the economy in March this year were the categories of shelter and of energy, particularly gasoline.
Yes, gas prices rose by almost six and a half percent last month.
Now, you would think higher gas prices means higher transportation costs, and that would push up the cost of food.
And Megan Schweitzer says yes.
Energy prices are an input into the food production process, but it's one of many components that feeds into food prices, food processing and packaging and wholesaling and retailing.
And so you have all of these factors feeding into food prices.
But they didn't feed in enough to raise retail prices during March.
In fact, she says that last month of the 15 major food categories that she tracks, prices went up for nine of them, down for six.
For the most part, we saw prices increase for categories across the meats, poultry and fish categories.
Prices declined for dairy products, for fats and oils, sugar and sweets, cereals and bakery products, and for fresh fruits and fresh vegetables, leaving overall grocery store food prices up from this time a year ago by only one point two percent.
Oh, and Schweitzer says some foods are selling for less than a year ago, namely eggs, dairy products and fish and seafood.
On the other side of the scale, beef prices are rising rapidly.
Last month, prices averaged about seven and a half percent higher than March of one year ago.
Gary Crawford reporting for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
