Beef Is Up 9.8 Percent This Year and Eggs Are Down 30.8 Percent

The Forecast

The USDA Economic Research Service updated its Food Price Outlook on August 25. For 2026, all food is forecast to rise 3.0 percent, groceries 2.5 percent and restaurant meals 3.6 percent.

Inside that flat-sounding grocery number, the categories have separated sharply.

Where the Increases Are

Beef and veal lead at 9.8 percent, driven by tight cattle supplies that have been tightening for several years. Sugar and sweets follow at 7.1 percent. Fresh vegetables are up 5.9 percent, with tomatoes up 12.8 percent year over year. Nonalcoholic beverages are up 4.3 percent, with coffee and tea elevated. Fresh fruit is up 2.9 percent.

Where They Are Not

Pork is up 0.8 percent and poultry 0.5 percent, both effectively flat. Eggs are down 30.8 percent as supply recovers from the highly pathogenic avian influenza losses that drove the 2025 spike.

The practical effect is a substitution economy inside the meat case. Beef is on its way to being a special-occasion protein while chicken, pork and eggs hold close to where they were. Households that have quietly shifted their protein mix over the last eighteen months have been responding to a real price signal, not imagining one.

The Policy Response So Far

The administration moved in August to allow 300,000 metric tons of ground beef in tariff-free, a supply-side measure aimed directly at the beef number. Whether that volume is large enough to move a national average is not established, and the USDA forecast does not incorporate it.

What 2027 Looks Like, With the Honest Caveat

The USDA forecasts all food up 2.4 percent and groceries up 2.1 percent in 2027. The prediction interval around the grocery figure runs from negative 5.7 percent to positive 10.5 percent.

That is a sixteen-point spread, and it is worth reading as information rather than noise. The department is stating that a year from now groceries could be meaningfully cheaper or meaningfully more expensive, and that the inputs which would decide it, including trade policy, herd rebuilding and weather, are not currently predictable.

References: Food Price Outlook - Summary Findings | Trump to allow import of 300,000 metric tons of ground beef without tariff | Beef is becoming a luxury as prices stay at record highs. They likely won’t come down until 2028, says Farm Bureau