Retail Food Dollar: Fresh Fruits

Retail fruit and vegetables share a much stronger relationship with farm commodity prices than many other foods. Looking at ERS? Retail Food Dollar series, for example, farm and agribusiness represent 40.2 cents of every dollar spent on fresh fruit, while just 7.4 cents of every dollar spent on cereal products, which undergo more processing. This, as well as seasonality, helps to explain why the fresh fruit and fresh vegetable Consumer Price Indexes (CPIs) are among the most volatile that ERS analyzes and forecasts.