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November 22, 2016

Americans can give thanks to food price deflation this holiday

Courtesy / Flickr, Tim Sackton Americans will be paying less this year for their Thanksgiving Day meals than they have for decades.

Many Americans have another thing to be thankful for this upcoming Thanksgiving, as an extended stretch of nationwide food price deflation will have consumers paying less for their holiday meals than they have for decades.

But Brian Todd of the Upper Saddle River, N.J.-based Food Institute told Maine Public that residents of Vacationland may not see as much of a relief as others across the country. Todd said that even though a lot of Thanksgiving food is produced in Maine, it’s often shipped out-of-state for processing before coming back to the state. That long trip back to the state means added costs for logistics and transport, according to Todd.

“The basic driver is logistics,” Todd told Maine Public. “Maine is a little bit off the beaten path so therefore it costs a little bit more for food to get up there, be it by train or truck, in whatever manner, so in that sense prices are always somewhat higher.”

However, John Rebar, who heads University of Maine Cooperative Extension, told Maine Public that “It’s not necessarily a great thing for farmers when the price of food gets real cheap."

Photo: Tim Sackton/Flickr 

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