Food prices on the decline

<span>American shoppers paid slightly less for food at the grocery store the final three months of 2012 according to the American Farm Bureau Federation Quarterly Marketbasket Survey.</span>

<span>The informal survey figures the total cost of 16 food items that can be used to prepare one or more meals at $50.54, down $1.36 compared to the third quarter of 2012.</span>

<span>“The survey is conducted in every state by American Farm Bureau volunteers,” said Aurline Boyack, Vice President for Member Services at the Utah Farm Bureau. “Every quarter they collect the prices on the 16 items and send the total to the American Farm Bureau.”</span>

<span>Boyack said as retail grocery prices have increased gradually over time, the share of the average food dollar that the country’s farm and ranch families receive has dropped.</span>

<span>“Right now the farmers are getting 16 cents of every dollar that consumers are spending for food at the grocery store.”</span>

<span>“Through the mid-1970s, farmers received about one-third of consumer retail food expenditures,” said John Anderson, deputy chief economist of the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF). “Since then that figure has decreased steadily and is now about 16 percent.”</span>

<span>The AFBF has been conducting the informal quarterly Marketbasket survey of retail food price trends since 1989.</span>

<span>According to the USDA, Americans spend just under 10 percent of their disposable annual income on food, which is the lowest average in the world.</span>

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