Скачать или смотреть The Rising Cost of Christmas Dinner

As extended families the world over plan holiday celebrations again, they’re encountering a harsh reality: Traditional foods, especially those sold for a limited time in even a normal year, are significantly costlier in 2021—if they’re even available at all.

“There isn’t a product that we use on this farm that hasn’t gone up,” said Becky Howe, a third-generation farmer, as she watched workers guide a flock of turkeys to an open barn on the last day of slaughtering at the John Howe turkey farm outside Kent.

That includes the cost of steel used to construct the barns, chopped straw for bedding, corn feed, gas, packaging cartons and even wax for the automated plucking line. The farm wasn’t anticipating such inflationary pressure when it boosted the size of this year’s flock by 25% and, for the first time ever, started rearing geese, too.

The greatest headache has been finding enough workers during November and December, the farm’s busiest time of the year. Most of its employees are foreigners, who come to the country on temporary visa permits; the farm has boosted pay this year to retain staff. It has raised the price of its turkeys by 8%, but its own costs have gone up more. “The price increase hasn’t covered everything and we’ve had to absorb as much as we possibly could,” Howe said. “We don’t want to pass on too much and scare people away from buying our turkeys.”

Worried about rising prices—plus a shortage of U.K. truck drivers that will only exacerbate the squeeze—grocers say some families in London started buying their Christmas turkeys as early as October this year. The demand for smaller birds is particularly high as virus fears temper optimism that extended families will be gathering again this year after a 2020 in lockdown.

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