Your cart looks about the same as it did last year. The receipt does not. The strange part is that the official numbers say things have calmed down: groceries were just 1.8 percent more expensive in September than a year earlier, and the USDA expects food-at-home prices to finish 2026 up 2.3 percent. That average is hiding a lot. Beef and veal are forecast to rise 8.7 percent for the year. Candy, coffee, fresh produce and seafood all sit in categories climbing faster than their 20-year norms, and not one of those problems gets solved by the end of the year.
Beef Is the Worst of It
The USDA’s forecast for beef and veal in 2026 is an 8.7 percent increase, with a range of 7.4 to 10.1 percent. Prices actually slipped 1.3 percent between August and September, which is the first bit of air anyone has let out of the meat case in a while, but they were still 3.5 percent above the previous September.
The longer view is uglier. The retail value of Choice beef went from about $8.51 per pound in August 2024 to $10.49 per pound in July 2026, an increase of roughly 23 percent. Federally inspected beef production has run below year-ago levels for most of 2026 and is expected to stay there.
There simply are not enough cattle. The country entered 2026 with about 86.2 million cattle and calves, the smallest herd since the early 1950s and down from roughly 94.7 million in 2019. That is more than 8 million missing animals.
Cheap Steak Is Not Coming Back Soon
The breeding stock tells you how long this lasts. The U.S. beef cow herd stood at 28.5 million head on July 1, 2026, down 1 percent from a year earlier and the lowest July figure since USDA started reporting it in 1973. The 2026 calf crop is expected to total 32.5 million head, down 2 percent and, by the American Farm Bureau Federation’s count, the smallest on record. That would be the calf crop’s ninth straight annual decline.
Drought is the root cause. Eric Belasco, head of the agricultural economics department at Montana State University, told Fox News Digital that “the biggest thing has been drought,” explaining that years of dry weather stripped grasslands across the West and Plains and forced ranchers to sell cattle early, including the cows needed to produce the next round of calves. Even after a wetter autumn, about 43 percent of the U.S. cattle herd was still in drought in late October, by USDA’s count.
Even if every rancher in America decided to expand tomorrow, a heifer held back for breeding does not produce a market-ready calf for roughly two years. Omaha Steaks President and CEO Nate Rempe has said meaningful herd building and price recovery are unlikely before 2028 or 2029. Tyson Foods, meanwhile, said in August it will close its beef plant in Joslin, Illinois, and a case-ready facility in Eagle Mountain, Utah, and pursue the sale of its Pasco, Washington, beef plant, citing “one of the most historic cattle shortages the country has ever experienced.”
Chocolate Is Headed for Another Squeeze
Chocolate prices jumped 14.4 percent over the opening weeks of 2026 compared with the same stretch a year earlier, according to data from the intelligence firm Datasembly, nearly double the pace of early 2025. West Africa grows about 70 percent of the world’s cocoa, and more than a third of it comes out of Ivory Coast alone.
The cocoa market has gone somewhere it had never been. Futures mostly traded between $1,000 and $3,500 per metric ton from 2000 through the third quarter of 2022. They cleared $11,000 in April 2024 and hit a record $12,565 that December. By mid-February 2026 a ton was back to about $3,700. Then it started climbing again, closing at $5,670 in early October, with Goldman Sachs warning that a strong El Nino could leave the market exposed to another supply squeeze.
Store prices lag the bean market in both directions. David Ortega, a food economist at Michigan State University, told ABC News in February that “a lot of manufacturers bought cocoa when prices were high and that’s still very much moving through the supply chain.” Candy makers have also been shrinking bars and reformulating recipes to use less cocoa, so the bag that still costs $5 may not be the bag you remember. Lindt & Sprungli has cut its 2026 sales forecast twice, most recently in September, citing price-sensitive shoppers and a European heatwave.
The Rest of the Candy Aisle, Too
Sugar and sweets were 5.5 percent more expensive in September 2026 than a year earlier, and the category is one of seven the USDA expects to grow faster than its 20-year average this year. Candy and chewing gum were up 7.7 percent over the same stretch, more than double the 3.7 percent overall inflation rate.
Cocoa gets the blame, but sugar itself is not cheap here either. Brazil, Mexico and Guatemala supply most of the sugar imported into the U.S., and since 2014 Mexican sugar has come in under a price floor, put in place after the American Sugar Coalition argued duty-free imports were hurting domestic producers. Gummies, hard candy and bakery cases feel that even when there is no chocolate involved.
Coffee Is Still Running Hot
Coffee prices were up about 18 percent in January compared with a year earlier, ABC News reported from Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The pace has cooled since, but the USDA says retail coffee was still 7.1 percent above a year earlier in September, ahead of other drinks, and nonalcoholic beverages are another category running hotter than its historical average. Drought in Brazil did the damage; most import duties on coffee were lifted in November 2025.
Roasters are not absorbing all of it. Nestle blamed coffee and cocoa costs, along with tariffs and an infant formula recall, when its gross profit margin slipped 20 basis points to 46.4 percent in the first half of 2026, though it expects cheaper beans to help in the second half.
Produce Is Climbing on Two Fronts
Fresh vegetables are forecast to rise 5.8 percent in 2026, with a range of 4.8 to 6.8 percent. They were 2.8 percent above year-ago levels in September. In July the group was running 6.3 percent above a year earlier, with tomatoes up 12.8 percent.
Imports are the other half. The U.S. imports about 59 percent of the fresh fruit and 35 percent of the fresh vegetables it eats, according to the USDA, and Mexico supplies about half of those fruit imports and more than two-thirds of the vegetable imports by value. A bad week on either side of the border shows up fast in avocados, tomatoes, limes, peppers and winter berries.
Fresh fruit is the quieter climber. Prices rose 2.0 percent in a single month between August and September, were 4.9 percent above a year earlier, and are forecast up 2.9 percent for 2026. A 2 percent monthly move in one category is a lot, and it shows how fast this part of the store can turn.
Seafood Lost Its Price Advantage
Fish and seafood are on the USDA’s list of categories beating their 20-year average this year. Shrimp and imported fillets carry the most import exposure, and Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed fish and seafood prices up 6.5 percent from a year earlier in August. If you shifted from beef to the fish counter to save money, check the per-pound math again, because canned salmon, canned tuna and domestic catfish are now the cheap seats, not fresh shrimp.
What Is Actually Getting Cheaper
Eggs. After two brutal years, the USDA forecasts egg prices will fall 29.3 percent in 2026, and September prices were already 20.6 percent below a year earlier. For scale, retail egg prices rose 32.2 percent in 2022, 1.4 percent in 2023, 8.5 percent in 2024 and 21.9 percent in 2025. There were fewer new bird flu detections in the first quarter of 2026 than in the same quarter of 2025, and enough replacement pullets to cover normal flock turnover.
Dairy prices are forecast to dip 0.4 percent as the dairy herd grows and output per cow rises, which should keep pressure off cheese. Fats and oils are also expected to fall. Pork is forecast up just 1.0 percent and poultry 1.2 percent, both well below the grocery average.
How to Shop Around It
The pattern is easy to use once you see it. The things ripping higher either come from another country or come from an animal or a tree that takes years to replace. The things holding flat come from American barns and fields that reset every season.
So: pork shoulder and chicken thighs instead of chuck roast, since pork and poultry are the two meat categories barely moving. In-season produce instead of out-of-season imports, which skips the long freight haul. Eggs as the protein that actually got cheaper. Buy coffee and chocolate when they go on sale and buy more than one, because both markets are being driven by weather thousands of miles away.
One more number worth keeping in your head. The USDA’s forecast for food-at-home prices in 2027 is a 1.0 percent increase, which sounds like relief until you read the forecast interval: anywhere from negative 5.2 percent to positive 7.5 percent. Nobody is promising anything. Shop like beef stays expensive, because the cattle math says it will.
