USDA Sticks To Tame Food-Price Inflation Outlook

The Agriculture Department is standing by its forecast for unusually tame food-price inflation this year but warned that the broad rally in farm commodity prices since midsummer will take a bigger bite out of consumers’ wallets next year.



In its monthly food-price inflation forecast released Monday, the USDA stuck with the prediction it first made in late August that the government’s widely followed consumer-price index for food will rise between 0.5% and 1.5% this year, which would be the smallest increase since 1992.

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The USDA also left unchanged its forecast for retail food prices to climb by a more typical rate of between 2% and 3% in 2011.