This week, Americans gathered their friends and their family for outdoor cookouts on their back patios, or sun-drenched days at the lake to celebrate our nation’s Independence Day. Of course, for some Kansas farmers, they may have spent the day in the wheat field getting the last bits of the 2024 crop in the bin.

If you’re lucky, you may even see the local town’s fireworks display from the wheat field outside of town.

This week our colleagues at Farm Futures shared with you the costs of that July 4th cookout as tabulated by the American Farm Bureau Federation and Rabobank. You can read the story here: How much does a 4th of July cookout cost?

It’s no surprise to the family member who does the grocery shopping that food prices have spiked in the past year. According to Rabobank’s July 4th BBQ Index, an average barbecue for 10 people would cost $99 — or about nine hours of paid labor from the average American. It’s a 32% jump from 2019 in terms of how hard Americans have to work to afford hosting friends and family for July 4th this year.

Of course, AFBF has a slightly less expensive summer cookout cost, at $71.22, but both see a rise in prices. And right at the center of that plate is the rising cost of beef.

But again, the person in your family who does the bulk of grocery shopping already knows all this.

Did you?

I realize that in the year 2024 many families, even farm families, see both spouses sharing in more of the household work than ever before. And that’s great. But, if you’re not the one in your household who regularly makes the list and goes on the grocery run, I encourage you to do so at least once a month.

Consider it research.

Why should farmers care about consumer food trends? What does it matter to you if some suburbanite has started choosing chicken over beef for her family’s Sunday dinner? Or if that same family is starting to really cut back on dining out, or is reducing the amount of ice cream they stock in the freezer? Why should you care about the rise in the use of GLP-1 medications and weight loss surgeries?

Those issues all hit your pocketbooks too — albeit a little more delayed.

We’ve seen it before with diet trends. Friends, I’m old enough to remember the first wave of food trends in the 1980s and 1990s, when “diet” everything hit the market. Since then, we’ve seen every fad diet under the sun splash our demand charts like an uncle cannonballing into the swimming pool.

Multiple factors add up

Consider that the KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation of San Francisco, reports that as of May, its Health Tracking Poll found that about 12% of U.S. adults have taken a GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide) medication for weight loss or to treat another health problem. These drugs affect appetite and require drastic changes in diet and exercise in order to be effective. So, expect to see declining demand for high-fat and high-sugar foods, changes in portion sizes and more.

If it wasn’t a fad diet, it was the economy doing the same thing — like what economists are telling us they’re observing today. According to Rabobank, wages are up 25% over the past five years, but food inflation is at 30% for the same time frame. Consumers can cut coupons, switch to store brands and limit splurges only so much to make their dollars stretch.

Everybody eats, but today’s consumers are very different from the grocery shoppers of yesterday. And if you haven’t been in a grocery store lately, your preconceptions about who’s shopping, for what and why could be off. It’s worth a trip to the store to familiarize yourself with the end consumer of what you’re producing on the farm, how that product is packaged and marketed, and the reasons why it ends up in their carts.