Are grocery stores really less expensive??

written by

Jared Frye

posted on

October 21, 2021

Today we're going to do a little price comparison. We've heard everyone talk about prices going up in the grocery stores, so we decided to take a look. Below, we'll breakdown the difference between our farm prices and one of Roanoke's local grocery stores. Although we tried to compare similar quality, that often wasn't available. So most of these comparisons are to conventionally raised, GMO, grain fed/finished meats.  


So why are prices rising so much on the meat in the grocery stores? Well there’s several factors coming into play here.


One of the things that has been happening for well over a year now are impacts from the pandemic. A lot of folks have been, and still are, stocking up on meat, which increases demand beyond what was considered “normal”. Combine that with the effects of the large meat packing plants shutting down for extended periods of time and there is a serious backlog now being realized across the mass produced meat industry.


The other thing that is impacting meat production prices is inflation. As the costs of inputs continue to go up, costs will rise for all aspects of the process going from farm to grocery store. The feedlots are paying more for feed and fuel, the packing plants are seeing increased labor wages, and shipping both offshore and domestic are of course getting hit with high fuel costs. And yes, I did say offshore, because you would be amazed at how much of the meat you see in the grocery store comes from outside of the country…..but that’s a whole other topic for another day!

 Although it's never fun when prices go up, it does give you the opportunity to make a change. If you're going to spend the money anyways, why not keep your money in the community, and buy from someone you trust?  



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