Holiday food shoppers are likely to find the lowest prices in years for turkeys. Gary Crawford has more.

PARTICIPANTS: Gary Crawford. Classic film director, Alfred Hitchcock. USDA economist, Michael McConnell.

Transcript

And now to introduce the subject of today's story a classic film director known far and especially wide Everybody everybody knows him.

What was your name again?

My name is Alfred Hitchcock Oh, yeah, I would like to tell you about the birds and their age-long relationship with man Oh goody-goody I suspect you never realized that if it weren't for birds even some of our pastimes would suffer noticeably duck hunting for example and the turkey is Traditionally our guest of honor of Thanksgiving.

Ah, yes now we're getting to the subject of the Thanksgiving turkey now I realize it seems a bit early to start reporting about the cost of that turkey, but everybody else is doing it.

So let's Gobble up this opportunity and actually when it comes to what we shoppers can expect to pay for that Thanksgiving turkey People who are shopping for turkeys for their holidays are likely going to see some good deals out there That's agriculture department economist Mike McConnell and when he says good deals, he's not exaggerating Yeah, I think the main thing to to note about turkey prices this year is that the wholesale level We've seen dramatically lower prices in 2024 compared to what we were seeing in 2023 in 2022 And here's a prime example of that the representative USDA hen price that we use for the month of October was actually 17 percent lower than it was in 2023 and October's often when many supermarkets are stocking up buying their turkeys from wholesalers to sell during the holidays and as we heard earlier Supermarkets have been paying a lot less for those turkeys and 2024.

We're forecasting the average hen price to be 94 cents per pound That's in comparison to last year where we had an average of one dollar and 40 cents per pound So, you know a pretty you know a pretty stark decline McConnell says it's been a bit of a stark time for the folks who raise the turkeys to back in 2022 when prices for turkey and almost everything else peaked at very high levels consumer demand for turkey slowed down Causing a buildup of turkey supplies and a reduction in prices Meanwhile consumer demand has remained fairly weak and producers have been cutting production to match So in 2024 the USDA forecasts that turkey production will be 5.1 billion pounds That's in comparison to 2023 when we saw about 5.5 billion pounds of production So that means we're expecting turkey production to be about 6 percent lower than it was in 2023 But supplies of turkeys in cold storage continue to be large causing prices to fall at wholesale and retail Mike McConnell's been scanning hundreds and hundreds of supermarkets sale ads across the country featuring turkeys Looks like the level of features for turkeys is much higher this year in 2024 compared to Last year more stores are putting more turkeys on sale offering more discounts on those birds Meanwhile at the McConnell home, they are doing what they can to help turkey producers.

We have a pretty big Family meal, so we should have multiple turkeys that that go in front of our family multiple turkeys Wow

This is Gary Crawford reporting for the US Department of Agriculture.