In early November, Hays Culbreth's mother sent a poll to several family members. She said she could only cook two dishes for their group of 15 this Thanksgiving and asked each of them to vote for their favorite dish.
Culbreth guesses green beans, macaroni and cheese will make a dish, but his favorite sweet potato casserole with brown sugar crust won't.
"Talking about Thanksgiving being ruined," joked Culbreth, a 27-year-old financial planner from Knoxville, Tennessee.
Americans are bracing for this year's costly Thanksgiving, with double-digit prices for turkey, potatoes, fillings, canned pumpkin and other staples. The U.S. government estimates food prices will rise 9.5 percent to 10.5 percent this year; Historically, they have only grown by 2% per year.
Declining production and rising costs of labor, transportation and goods are partly to blame; Disease, bad weather and the war in Ukraine are also contributing factors.
"It's really not a shortage thing. It's a supply crunch for good reason," said David Anderson, a professor and agricultural economist at Texas A&M University.
After a difficult year for the American flock, wholesale turkey prices hit record highs. A particularly deadly bird flu virus, first reported in February at a turkey farm in Indiana, has wiped out 49 million turkeys and other poultry in 46 states, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Mark Jordan, executive director of Jonesboro, Arkansas-based Leap Market Analytics, said that as a result, the per capita supply of turkeys in the United States is at its lowest level since 1986. Jordan predicts that the wholesale price of frozen 8-16 pound turkey hens (usually purchased for Thanksgiving) in November will reach $1.77 per pound, up 28% from the same month last year.
Still, Jordan said, there will be plenty of whole birds on the Thanksgiving table. Over the past few years, companies have been moving a higher percentage of birds across the turkey market to capitalize on ongoing holiday demand.
Not every producer is affected equally. Butterball, which supplies about a third of its Thanksgiving turkeys, said bird flu affected only about 1 percent of its production due to safety measures taken after the last pandemic in 2015.
But Jordan said shoppers may have a harder time finding turkey breast or other parts of the meat. Higher ham prices give chefs fewer cheap alternatives, he said.
Anderson said bird flu has also pushed egg prices to record levels. According to the USDA, a dozen A eggs sold for an average of $2.28 in the second week of November, more than double the number last year.
Anderson said eggs would have been more expensive even without the flu because of the rising cost of corn and soybean meal used for chicken feed. Ukraine is usually a major exporter of corn, and the reduction in corn supplies has caused global prices to soar.
Add to that the price of canned pumpkins — a 30-ounce can of pumpkins is up 17% from last year, according to market research firm Datasembly — and it's clear that Thanksgiving desserts will also cost more. Nestlé's Libby produces 85% of the world's canned pumpkins. The pumpkin harvest was flat with previous years, but it had to make up for higher labor, transportation, fuel and energy costs, the company said.
Planning to fill on both sides? This will also cost you. Datasemby says a 16-ounce box of stuffing is 14% more expensive than last year. In the second week of November, a 5-pound bag of tawny potatoes sold for an average of $3.26, 45.5% higher than a year ago.
Craig Carlson, CEO of Chicago-based Carlson Produce Consulting, said this year's frosts and wet spring have severely hampered potato growth. Growers also raised prices to compensate for higher costs of seeds, fertilizer, diesel and machinery. Carlson said some growers' production costs have risen by 35 percent this year, and they can't always pay for themselves.
Higher labor and food costs also make ordering prepared meals more expensive. Whole Foods advertises a classic Thanksgiving meal for 8 people for $179.99. That's $40 more than last year's advertised price.
Good news? Not every item on your holiday shopping list is much more expensive. Paul Mitchell, an agricultural economist and professor at the University of Wisconsin, said cranberries had a good harvest, with prices rising less than 5 percent from late September to early November. According to the USDA, in the second week of November, the price of green beans rose by only 2 cents per pound.
Many grocery stores are discounting turkey and other holiday staples in the hope that shoppers will have more freedom to shop for other items. Walmart promised turkeys to cost less than $1 a pound and said prices for ham, potatoes and fillings were flat from last year. Kroger and Lidl also cut prices, so shoppers can spend $5 or less each on a meal for 10 people. Aldi is pulling prices back to 2019 levels.
But Hays Culbreth isn't optimistic about his casserole. He wasn't very good at cooking, so he planned to go to the grocery store on his way to a family banquet and buy a few pumpkin pies.