Thanksgiving Special, Retailers Give Thanks, Google Feeding America, Farmers Fix Food

Welcome to The Lempert Report LIVE special Thanksgiving Day edition.

What’s the latest on Thanksgiving Day food Prices
Grocery retailers are giving thanks
Google is Feeding America
A triple threat to food & nutrition security
The people this holiday season who are the most food insecure 
Farmers are fixing food, according to one CPG CEO

Transcript

Phil: 0:04

Welcome to the Lempert Report LIVE special Thanksgiving Day edition. What's the latest on Thanksgiving Day food prices? Grocery retailers are giving thanks. Google is feeding America a triple threat to food and nutrition security. The people this holiday season who are the most food insecure- what we can do. And farmers are fixing food according to one CPG CEO. Let's get started. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost of the 2022 Thanksgiving market basket, now that's Turkey stuffing sweet potatoes, rolls and butter peas, cranberries, vegetable tray, pumpkin pie, and whipped cream is costing 14.9% more than it did last year. Now that's on top of the 14%. That was higher last year over the year 2020. So today it's about a third more. The cost of Turkey, according to the U S D A economic research service is up 23% over last year to around a buck 64 a pound. In comparison, last year it was just a dollar$15 a pound. Now, there are two basic reasons for the increase. First, avian flu, which has killed more than 49 million birds this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the second labor shortage in poultry processing facilities. Now combined, this resulted in a loss of about 10% of Turkey production. But there is some good news. U S D A just reported that the amount of frozen turkeys increased by 2% and some retailers are rolling back prices more on that coming up. Everything else is also more expensive. This Thanksgiving butter up 25.8%. Chicken 17.2%, eggs up 32.5% flour, 17.1 fruits and vegetables up 7.1, and pork is up 6.1%. I guess what that means is we're gonna see a lot more ham than Turkey this year, and potatoes get this up 35%. So here's my recommendation. Use sweet potatoes. They're cheaper and they have not been affected by the shortage. Now the shortage of potatoes is for two reasons, weather conditions, and that many potato farmers have switched to growing wheat and grain crops, which have a stronger demand, and they can make more money on those cranberry sauce. 2022 prices up 22% over last year. However, there will not be a shortage after all. On Friday, BLS sent over a chart that showed the average time spent over the holidays through 2021. On Thanksgiving, we spend on average 91 minutes eating and drinking and a whopping 126 minutes making the food and cleaning up. Now we know why so many of us would rather go to a family member or friend, or even to a restaurant. Now, we also just found out about a brand new product. This is Spams Figgy Pudding, no joke. So, it's being sold spam.com, amazon.com and walmart.com. But wait, wait, already sold out. So two 12 ounce cans or 10 bucks might ask what a figgy pudding is. Well, it's a limited supply, obviously, and it, according to spam, brings a blend of warm spices and seasonal ingredients that will be the star in many Witcher Time recipe favorites, notes of cinnamon and nutmeg combined with fig and orange flavors. You'll taste true holiday comfort. They'll have you caroling all season long, but of course you can't buy it. So, much for the Carols. Spam, if you go to their website, they actually have a classic animation and song to introduce consumers to this holiday treat. It's also on YouTube. So from the makers of spam, I guess we can say. Thank you. Not sure. So Sally, what are retailers doing to help their shoppers this year?

Sally: 4:19

Phil, we've seen so many great things that supermarkets are doing to get involved to help, feed everyone in America. We know this is a tough time of year for a lot of people. So, you know, I've looked at a, at at several of them, but here's a few that I really loved that are happening. Kroger is doing a zero compromise shopping guide that offers meal options for all of your traditional dishes. You can feed, if you use this guide, you're supposed to be able to feed up to 10 people for as little as$5 a person. They're also not going to be raising the cost of Turkey this year with inflation. And that's something we're seeing with a lot of retailers. Meyer is doing something really cool. They are in an effort to promote their store brand. They will be providing a meal to someone in need for every purchase of one of their store brands. So that's another great way. Walmart is saying that they're not gonna raise the price of Turkey. In fact, they're gonna sell Turkey for the same thing that they sold it for last year. Now, what's really cool though is that Aldi is saying that they're not going to raise prices since 2019. So they're going to be selling their Thanksgiving items, select items at 2019 prices. So there's a lot of different offers out there.

Phil: 5:46

There is, and you know, I think with Walmart and Aldi in particular, having their price of Turkey around a dollar a pound. Now all these other retailers, as you pointing out, we're gonna see Turkey wars. So before everybody goes out and buys their Turkey, I think a lot of people have already, but check those circulars because the bottom line is there are gonna be deals. And also, let's not forget Friday after Thanksgiving, Turkey prices typically go down anyway, so it might be a good time to stock up, clean out the freezer, and that way you can have a Turkey. So what what else is really cool is Google has teamed up with Feeding America to deliver 50 million meals. It's to their Feeding America's network of food banks and pantries across the country. And what Google is also doing is supporting their technological advancement through 10 million in funding. Now, this is really important, feeding America, we've, we've talked to the about them before. We've interviewed them before. There are 34 million people here in the US including 9 million kids that are facing food insecurity. So when we take a look at the importance of their work and what all of us should be doing, I can't underscore it enough. What Google also found is that in 2022 searches with the words food and prices were up 45%. And the good news is when people search for where to donate food near me, it went over 850% over the past five years. So, you know, hats off to Google for working with Feeding America very important. And we all need to do what we can to help.

Sally: 7:42

Yeah, what an amazing partnership with such a great technology company and with such a great organization that really can get food to people. And you know, there's there, you know, we've been talking about it for a while that, you know, a one way to tackle food security is through the use of technology and being able to connect with the farmers and the restaurants and not letting that food go to waste, getting it to people.

Phil: 8:09

Exactly. Now a new study just came out that showed that inflation is a triple threat to food insecurity. Tell us more about that.

Sally: 8:21

Well, what we're seeing, Phil, is we're seeing that a lot of women, particularly women that we're talking about, women that are in households where they are single moms are finding themselves food insecure. Not only food insecure, but also they are more prone to compulsive eating, to junk food addiction, unsuccessful attempts to get healthy when they really want to. And it really makes sense when you think about it. You know, I know I am a mom and, and you get stressed, you don't have time and you sometimes you're the last person to, to get to eat. So it is easy to see how this could happen, but particularly in families where women are raising children, this is happening.

Phil: 9:10

And also, what U S D A has has talked about, is that a lot of families are reporting that SNAP is insufficient that many must rely on food banks and pantries, as a safety net. And what's interesting, which I didn't know, is the Thrifty Food Plan they set their costs for a full year starting October 1st. That means that SNAP benefits between October 1st, 2022 to October 1st, 2023 are based on the cost of food in June of 2022. So even, even the fact that as prices continue to go up, they can't raise, you know, what the benefits are till next October. So we can only hope that frankly, you know, prices stay stable at worst case and even go down a little bit, otherwise we're gonna have a real problem. Also it's important to note that there are about 60,000 food pantries in the US and 53 million people actually went to a food pantry in the past 12 months. So again, just underscoring whether it's Feeding America, Google, everything that, you know, people are trying to do. And also what came out of the White House conference is a lot of grocery retailers stepping up and saying that they're gonna give not only for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but all year round that they're gonna be supplying food to a lot of these 53 million people. So that helps. Now, when we look at who is the most insecure, this holiday season this comes from the Posa Daily Post. Grandparent headed households are experiencing food insecurity at twice, at twice the national rate. And there's a new term I'd never heard of before called Grand Families. There's two and a half million kids that are growing up in grand families. And those are grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, or close friends, taking care of kids without the parent in their home, 25%. This was shocking to me. 25% of grandparent headed household experienced food insecurity between 2019 and 2020 twice the national rate. So tell us a little bit more about why this is such a problem.

Sally: 11:50

Yeah, Phil, so this grandfamilies, yes, this word is new, but it's something that we, that we all have seen. I know our next door neighbors, our grandparents raising a teenage boy, they've been raising him since he was born, and they're wonderful people. They are retired, however, they're older and I know that it is tough to make ends meet sometimes. So, you know, when we're looking at these almost 3 million households that where children are being raised by their grandparents, we have to think about what sort of opportunities there are for them to get deals and, and to be able to feed their kids healthy. And you know, one of the things that I recently read about was a Medicare program. There's, there's a supplemental program called Medica that will provide actual vouchers to people who are signed up for the supplemental program through Medicare that they can use to get fruits and vegetables. And they're really helping a lot of people. Now, it's not available in every state. But the key here, and you were, you were speaking about Snap earlier, is that we need to make sure that we are getting the message out to these grandparents, to these women that are raising children by themselves or any type of household that is food insecure. We need to get the message out on where these benefits are, how they can find them.

Phil: 13:16

Absolutely. And you know, it comes back to the rule that we all grew up with. You know, you want to take care of your neighbor and if you've got a neighbor that this holiday season is hungry and searching out for food, invite them over to your house, bring food to them, go volunteer at a food pantry or a food bank, donate food, donate money. We really, you know, have a significant problem that we've gotta fix. Nobody, and this isn't my words, but we've heard it a hundred times, nobody in this country should go hungry. And when kids are hungry in particular, you know, they don't learn as well. They get sicker. And especially coming out of Covid and the pandemic, this flu season is among the worst that we've seen. We have to take care of each other, and it really starts with good health and good nutrition. So we all have that responsibility, those of us in in the food world, which is all of us. So, some good news. Beth Ford, who's the president and CEO of Land of Lakes just had a chat, a fireside chat at the 2022 Henry Gardner Global Food Systems at Kansas State University. And what's the good news that she shared?

Sally: 14:41

Well, I love what she has to say here. She's really saying a lot of great things for the agricultural community, which she is trying to bring more into the light, it shine a light on the agricultural community and to inform people more about what it is like to be a farmer and, and how hard it is for some of these farmers. In fact, one of the things I learned from reading about this is that only 1% of the world is even really informed about the agricultural world and what farming entails. So she is, she is making an effort through this American Connection Project, through Land O'Lakes to bridge the digital divide between rural areas and to also help these companies and organizations improve upon three key areas, which I love what she's talking about here. She's talking about how we need to invest more in agricultural research from the federal government level. She's talking about immigration reform. We are 2.5 million workers short right now, as far as harvesting plants. And I think the Central Valley in California lost a third of their crops this past season because they just didn't have enough labor. And then she's also talking about the other challenge of water in American agriculture and making sure that, you know, we are putting money into reservoirs, piping and, you know, and taking care of our water.

Phil: 16:15

You know, the other thing that she said, which I found interesting, is that China outstrips us five to one of funding for agriculture research. Yes. That to me is shocking. I just, I just don't get it. A new survey was just released last week from A&M consumer and retail group that notes that the number one new habit that consumers have adopted in response to inflation is switching to generic brands. 43% of Americans have done that. Store brands are where it's at. There's no question about that. We've talked a lot about that. And also what I love is the fact that retailers are upping the quality of their store brands, upping their ingredients, upping their nutritional content. Now there's no doubt that we're gonna continue to see food prices and their supply chain affected by climate, transportation, labor. But let's remember Thanksgiving and every day is the time to remember and embrace our friends and our family. Most of all, it's the time to be thankful for all that we have and to take care of those who have not. Happy Thanksgiving from Sally, Tony, and me to you and all yours. And we'll see you back here next week.