Before Thanksgiving was about turkey, or football, or pumpkin spice lattes, it was a celebration of the harvest. It was an occasion for families and farmers to celebrate the year’s most generous bounty. It’s the season when farms are at their most colourful and productive – fields bursting with golden corn, trees heavy with red fruit. It’s also when food prices, traditionally, are at their lowest.
Except this year’s celebration will likely cost more than ever before. The price of a classic turkey dinner last year made headlines for its already sizable price tag: an estimated $203 for a family of four. But food costs have risen another 6.9 per cent this year.
Using data from the Agri-Foods Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University and Statistics Canada, The Globe analyzed the cost of a traditional Thanksgiving meal – from turkey and potatoes to green beans and pumpkin – and found the prices of almost every major ingredient rising between four and 40 per cent.
Higher grocery prices have already forced Canadians to make dramatic changes to their shopping habits. Some 64 per cent say they’ve made “substantial” changes, according to a Dalhousie survey this week – increasingly buying their food at discount stores and dollar shops. This on top of already record-high rates of food insecurity, and surging demand at food banks across the country.
Ottawa’s response so far has been to turn the focus onto grocery stores. After summoning grocery CEOs to Ottawa last month, innovation minister François-Philippe Champagne said this week that retailers have since promised discounts and price freezes. Pundits have zeroed in on grocery retailers too, accusing them of profiteering and of “greedflation.” But food prices are complicated – and extend far beyond the effects of any one retailer (whose profit margins have remained relatively flat, rising between one and two percentage points since 2017).
The events of the past few years have thrown our global food systems into turmoil. Canada’s food supply is built on a just-in-time approach (rather than stockpiling) in a heavily globalized system. The COVID-19 pandemic set global food prices skyrocketing by 65 per cent between 2020 and 2021, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Food prices rose another 12 per cent, globally, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine early last year.
Instead, experts say, the many reasons behind higher prices at the grocery store can vary from shelf to shelf, ingredient to ingredient. “This is not just about Canada,” said Sylvain Charlebois, director of Dalhousie’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab. “It’s about the entire world. The entire world impacted by several ‘black swan’ events.”
It’s not all bad news. Grocery store specials – steep discounts designed to bring customers into the store – tend to be much more frequent in Canada than in the U.S., says Mike von Massow, a food economics professor at the University of Guelph. This means that those looking out for deals – or willing to make substitutions – can still find ways to save money.
For example, he suggested making an apple pie this year instead of pumpkin, given apple farmers are experiencing good crops. Or instead of a turkey, he suggested ham: pork is one of the few foods to have actually dropped in price this year, owing to large inventories. And for those interested in a plant-based choice, tofu even dropped in price, by six per cent since last year. “If you are willing and able to move a little bit away from the traditional things,” said Prof. von Massow, “you can probably buffer price increases more effectively.”
And even those who aren’t willing to make substitutions have reason for optimism. While prices aren’t likely to come down anytime soon, food inflation already appears to have begun cooling. Except for two months where the rate remained static, food inflation has dropped every single month since January of this year. And last month’s report from Statistics Canada of 6.9 per cent was the lowest we’ve seen since February, 2022. Even without the pressure from Ottawa, said Prof. Charlebois, we’ll likely see relief soon – prices steadying, slowing their incessant climb. “Things are actually improving,” he said. “We are expecting more deals, more breaks.”
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The federal government has adopted measures to stabilize food prices, but many expert question whether they’ll succeed. Economist Michael Von Massow spoke with The Decibel about why food inflation is such a hard problem to solve. Subscribe for more episodes.