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Food prices flat this year but poised to increase

While retail food prices started off this year being higher than 2011, prices didn’t increase all that much throughout this year.

“It looks like we’re going to end up with supermarket prices, retail food prices, increasing just about 2-and-a-half on the year,” says USDA economist Ricky Volpe says the Food Price Outlook shows those increases are mostly in the animal product sector, meat and dairy.

The impact of the drought on food prices, he says, is expected to be seen mostly next year, “For 2013, we’re looking at overall food price inflation to be 3 to 4-percent.”  That’s the amount the USDA projected at the height of the drought this summer.