Despite everything the president may promise in his campaign, grocery prices in March 2025 remain stubbornly high compared to pre-pandemic costs. We all buy groceries, but prices have risen faster than the rate of inflation since the pandemic. Worse, costs have surpassed the rate of inflation since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. While prices have risen roughly 19% in the last few years, families are paying about 25% more for groceries.
Americans saw a 45% jump in food insecurity in 2022, which didn’t end with the pandemic. And it hits harder, depending on where you are financially. The Bureau of Labor Statistics points out that low-income consumers spend 25% of their money on groceries, while the wealthy invest less than 3.5% of their own income. The average American halfway between poor and wealthy dedicates more than 10% of their annual income on groceries.
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The Biden administration calculated inflation for the federal government’s estimate of what it costs to provide a healthy, budget-conscious diet for a family of four, and raised the SNAP benefit maximum by 21%, which, in turn, hiked the average per-person monthly SNAP benefit from $129 to $231. However, Trump and GOP House and Senate leaders are looking to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget over the next decade to fund more tax cuts for the nation’s wealthy. More than $230 billion of that will include mandatory spending at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, serving 42 million Americans and funding 200,000 U.S. grocery industry jobs and 45,000 jobs in supporting industries in agriculture, manufacturing, transportation and municipal services in 2020. This falls in line with a House Republican Study Committee’s 2024 plan to reduce SNAP benefits 22%.
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All these factors add up to a rotten time for grocery costs to leap out of reach, but Mississippi Black farmers are eying the rising costs on grocery shelves and saying they can compete with a lot of that.
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