Thanksgiving Turkeys, Side Dishes Cost More, If You Can Find Them

ACROSS AMERICA — Americans should brace themselves to pay more for their traditional Thanksgiving turkeys — if they can find birds at all amid farm labor shortages and a U.S. supply chain battered by the pandemic.

Turkeys aren’t the only Thanksgiving dinner staple that could eat into consumers’ budgets this year. Overall, it’s likely to cost Americans a few dollars more to set the Thanksgiving table this year, according to an analyst with the American Farm Bureau.

Kinks in the supply chain as well as labor shortages aren’t the only issues giving Americans sticker shock at the grocery store checkout counter. Unfavorable trade policies, bad weather and high transportation costs are factors, too, along with inflation.

The Consumer Price Index for food in September was up 4.6 percent from the year prior, driven by prices for meat, poultry, fish and eggs that soared 10.5 percent year over year.

“When you go to the grocery store and it feels more expensive, that’s because it is,” Veronica Nigh, a senior economist at the American Farm Bureau, told CBS “MoneyWatch,” pointing out food prices are up 3.7 percent in 2021. That compares with the 20-year average annual increase of about 2.4 percent.

As a result, Nigh said, the cost of a traditional turkey dinner will be 4 percent to 5 percent more than in 2020, when the pandemic sent prices to the lowest level in 10 years. A feast for 10 was $46.90 or so in 2020, according to the Farm Bureau’s 35th annual survey on traditional Thanksgiving meal costs.

Turkey farmers have told reporters they have plenty of birds but are having trouble finding people to process them amid a farm worker labor shortage that has prompted calls on Congress from some industry leaders to allow them to employ immigrant workers year-round.

Robert Kauffman told news station WBBM, the CBSLocal affiliate in Chicago, that he’s worried about finding enough people to process the 60,000 turkeys he raises annually at his Ho-Ka Turkey Farms in Waterman, Illinois.

Usually, Kauffman hires 100 temporary workers to prepare for the Thanksgiving season. This year, he’s hired seven.

“I can dress with a skeleton crew, but I don’t like to,” he said. “And I won’t get the numbers I need. If I have a nice full dressing line, we can do maybe 2,500 birds a day. The pace I like to have.”

Turkeys cost more this year, anywhere from a dime to 15 cents more a pound, depending on whether the bird is a hen or a tom, or frozen or fresh.

Other staples on the Thanksgiving table may be hard to come by as well.

Produce shortages could hit U.S. consumers next, Total Quality Logistics chief executive Kerry Byrne told news station KSBY, an NBC affiliate in central California.

“If you're into cranberry sauce,” Byrne told the news station, “I don't want to start a panic, but you probably want to get that now.”

Sweet potato farmers in North Carolina, where more than 40 percent of the national sweet potato crop is grown, are having trouble finding enough people to bring in the $375 million annual crop. Sweet potatoes must be harvested by hand, and trucking costs are high, too.

"We've never had this problem before," Nancy Torres, operations manager for Battleboro Produce near Rocky Mount, told news station WRAL, the NBC affiliate in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. "This is the first year we are having these kinds of issues."

Eggs and dairy products are expected to continue to cost more, too.

“Well, the chickens, they produce so many eggs per day," grocery supply chain expert Pedro Reyes told KSBY. “But if they can't be processed forward, then they have to be thrown away.”