A looming turkey shortage coupled with rising inflation means that your Thanksgiving turkey is going to be hard to find and really pricey this year. Not only have food costs continued to creep up at an alarming rate thanks to inflation, turkey supplies are particularly tight thanks to a decision back in 2019 by turkey producers to cut back on the number of birds they raise after the price of turkey crashed. All this has been exacerbated by the ravages of avian flu, which killed 3.6 percent of the nation’s turkeys this year, reducing the number of birds available to purchase in the grocery store further, according to The New York Times.
What that means is that prices for turkey are going to be a lot higher than they were last year—in fact they could be as much as double. And it also means you might want to do your Thanksgiving preparations well in advance. LIke, yes, right now. “I tell people if they are going to buy one of our turkeys, if they see one in the store they better pick it up and put it in the freezer,” poultry producer Greg Gunthrop told The New York Times. He added that “I’ve never seen anything as crazy as the turkey market right now.”