summer cookout

Cost for Your Summer Cookout

Dan General

summer cookoutPicnic time is officially here. Time for the summer cookout. Cathy Isom has some good news about how much we will be saving on some of the fixings of this year’s 4th of July picnic. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.

Cost for Your Summer Cookout

A recent survey American Farm Bureau Federation survey shows we will pay a little less this year compared to last summer for those summer cookout favorites. AFBF market intelligence director John Newton says the survey of planningstaple summer cookout items for 10 people will cost less than $6 per person.

The summer cookout survey showed that the cost of the 14 food items used for a summer barbecue, including ribs, hot dogs, hamburgers, watermelon and American cheese was $55.70, down slightly from last year’s total.

He says the declines in price follows the market action and on-farm production, with an increase in pork production and an abundance of dairy supplies this year.

The foods that were the biggest driver of the price of the decline were ribs and American cheese. We saw a 60 cent decline in ribs, and a 24 cents per pound decline in American cheese. We also saw a decline in chocolate milk, the natural recovery drink, as it was down about two percent from last year.

Newton says the year-to-year direction of the marketbasket survey tracks closely with the federal government’s Consumer Price Index report for food at home and attributes the declines in the prices consumers pay to the hard work of American farmers and ranchers.

And that’s music to our ears on July 4th.

I’m Cathy Isom…