Food Inflation Worsening, Gro Index Signals

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Gro’s US Food Price Index is at its highest level seen this year, which continues to send a worrying signal on high food inflation. Given the outsized role of the US in worldwide food and agricultural markets, this will continue to reverberate across the global agricultural trade network.

The Gro US Food Price Index stood at 129.06 as of Sept. 20, 29% above this time last year. That’s the highest level seen all year and near the peak brought on by COVID in May 2020. 

Unlike the COVID-induced spike, which quickly subsided in subsequent months, the steady increase in the Gro US Food Price Index since October 2020 suggests a more persistent form of inflation.

Gro’s US Food Price Index is updated daily and provides an inflation estimate for the current month, which is up to 6 weeks ahead of when official data becomes available from the US government. The Index provides a daily aggregation of price movements based on consumption of various food items, including grains, fruit, vegetables, proteins, and milk. 

Beef prices have increased 44% from this time last year, while poultry prices have more than doubled. Prices have been driven by strong domestic and international demand, high feed costs, and supply chain disruptions. Fresh produce prices have also increased. For example, US apple prices are up 95% year to date, while organic navel oranges are up 65%.

Price indices are the most widely used measures to forecast food inflation. These indices aid governments in determining economic policy, and provide businesses and consumers an idea about price changes in the country. 

Gro users can build a custom-weighted index to analyze how a basket of goods central to a company’s core business is affected by inflation, and act as a guide in order to make informed decisions. Please contact support@gro-intelligence.com for more information. 

This insight was powered by the Gro platform, which enables better and faster decisions about factors affecting the entire global agricultural ecosystem. Gro organizes over 40,000 datasets from sources around the world into a unified ontology, which allows users to derive valuable insights such as this one. You can explore the data available on Gro with a free account, or please get in touch if you would like to learn more about a specific crop, region, or business issue.

 

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