FOX Business’ Madison Alworth talks about the cost of a Fourth of July barbecue on “Varney & Co.”
Americans are paying record high prices to host Fourth of July barbecues this year, as inflation remains as high as the weather.
According to the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), the cost of a traditional Fourth of July barbecue for 10 people will rise from $59.50 to $71.22 in 2021. That will increase the prices of your favorite sides like burger meat, buns, cheese and chips, and make firing up the grill a painful expense.
“Nationally, this represents the first time the price has exceeded $7 per person, bringing the total cost of the meal to $7.12 per person,” AFBF economists Bernt Nelson and Samantha Ayub said. “On average, only two items on the table have fallen in price while everything else on the table has increased in price. While the grocery bill may come as a shock, it is consistent with the inflation that has been rocking our economy, including the farm economy, for the past few years.”
AFBF’s Market Basket Study recruited volunteers from across the country to catalog the prices of a complete homemade barbecue complete with cheeseburgers, chicken breasts, pork chops, potato chips, homemade potato salad, fresh-squeezed lemonade, chocolate chip cookies and, of course, ice cream.
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An American family sits down for a 4th of July barbecue. (via monkeybusinessimages / iStock)
According to the AFBF, meat takes up the largest portion of a barbecue budget, making up about half of the total cost of the barbecue.
Hamburgers are the most expensive: Two pounds of ground beef costs an average of $12.77, up from $8.20 just three years ago. Total beef inventory is at a 73-year low, and beef in refrigerated warehouses is at record lows, contributing to the higher prices.
Pork chops are also on the rise, up 8 percent nationwide from last year, with a 3-pound chop costing an average of $15.49, and $19.91 in California, where the sale of meat from animals that don’t meet California animal welfare standards, regardless of where they were raised, is prohibited in the state, AFBF said.
The good news is that two pounds of chicken breasts will average $7.83, down 4% from 2023 and more than 13% from the all-time high recorded in 2022 during the avian flu outbreak.
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Ground beef, hamburger buns, pork chops and American cheese have all increased in price over the past four years, while chicken prices have fallen. (/ Fox News)
As for side dishes, burger buns will cost $2.41 on average at stores, up 7% from last year, while American cheese will be roughly the same as last year at $3.57, up just 1%.
Lemonade is 12% more expensive, averaging $4.19, due to the high cost of raw materials. The citrus greening disease outbreak at the end of last year in California, where most of the lemons in the U.S. are produced, has hit lemon production hard and caused prices to soar. Sugar prices have also risen due to a decline in global production and higher import tariffs from Mexico.
AFBF’s Market Basket also offers sides and desserts such as chips, potato salad, ice cream and chocolate chip cookies.
A large bag of potato chips averaged $4.90, up 8 percent from last year. Potato salad was one of the two cheapest items, along with chicken breasts, down 4 percent from last year. Potato and egg prices are both down, but egg stocks are still recovering from the avian flu outbreak and prices are higher than historical levels.
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The prices of lemonade, chips, ice cream and cookies have all increased in the past four years, while potato salad has gotten cheaper. (/ Fox News)
Chocolate chip cookies are up about 2 percent to $1.99, and a half gallon of ice cream is up 7 percent from last year, averaging $5.65.
Though prices are rising overall, the latest inflation report shows the economy is cooling slightly, and officials expect that to continue. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell expressed optimism Tuesday that inflation is trending downward, based on the Consumer Price Index reports for April and May.
“I think the last reading, and to a lesser extent the previous readings, suggest that we are returning to a disinflationary path,” Powell said at a central bank forum in Sintra, Portugal. “We want to have greater confidence that inflation is declining sustainably to 2 percent before we begin the process of easing policy.”
The authorities voted At its last meeting in May, the Fed decided to keep interest rates on hold at a range of 5.25 percent to 5.5 percent, the highest level since 2001. In a statement after the meeting, policymakers left the door open to a rate cut this year but stressed they needed “further confidence” that inflation was falling before easing policy.
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Since then, there is some evidence that inflation is starting to ease again. A personal consumption index showed that inflation eased slightly to 2.6% in May from a high of 7.1%. At the same time, core prices, which the Fed watches more closely because they exclude more volatile measures like food and energy, rose 2.6%, the smallest annual increase since March 2021.
“This is really great progress,” Powell said. “We’ve made great progress. We just want to understand that the levels that we’re seeing are an accurate representation of what underlying inflation is.”
FOX Business’ Megan Henney contributed to this report.
