Of the food categories in USDA’s September price outlook, only beef is forecast to climb faster than fresh vegetables. The Economic Research Service predicts the fresh-vegetable index will average 5.7 percent higher in 2026 than in 2025, and it labels that figure a forecast. The year is not over, so the number can still move.
Where the 5.7 percent sits in the September table
The Food Price Outlook summary, updated September 25, 2026, lists a forecast for each major grocery category. Fresh vegetables are forecast to increase 5.7 percent, beef and veal 9.4 percent, and fresh fruits 2.5 percent. For the grocery store as a whole, food at home is forecast at 2.4 percent, and all food, which adds restaurant meals, at 2.9 percent.
Vegetables therefore run at more than double the rate of the grocery average. Subtracting, 5.7 minus 2.4 is 3.3 points of extra increase, which means the produce section is pulling the overall grocery number up rather than moving with it.
A range of 4.3 to 7.2 percent
The agency pairs the point forecast with a prediction interval of 4.3 to 7.2 percent, a span of 2.9 points. Both ends are increases. Unlike eggs, which the same release forecasts to fall, the vegetable forecast has no scenario in which prices come down for the year.
The agency’s documentation describes the ranges as 95 percent forecast intervals built from time-series models chosen for each food category. By late September most of 2026 has been measured, which is why the interval is comparatively tight. The documentation notes that as more data become available, “the span of the forecast intervals shrinks.”
The fresh-fruit line makes the separation plain. Fruit is forecast at 2.5 percent, with an interval of 1.5 to 3.7 percent. The lowest vegetable outcome in the interval, 4.3 percent, is higher than the highest fruit outcome, 3.7 percent, so the two ranges do not overlap at all. Within the produce aisle, vegetables are where the agency sees the pressure.
Fresh vegetables next to dairy, poultry and pork
Set beside the other everyday staples, the vegetable number stands out. The agency forecasts dairy products to rise 0.1 percent in 2026, with an interval of minus 0.6 to plus 0.8 percent. Poultry is forecast at 1.0 percent, with an interval of 0.0 to 2.1 percent, and pork at 1.2 percent, with an interval of minus 0.1 to plus 2.6 percent.
Those three staples are close to flat, while vegetables are the category where a shopping list gets noticeably dearer. A cart built around milk, chicken and pork would see little change from the forecast, and a cart loaded with salads, onions and greens would see most of it. The forecast covers an index of prices nationwide, so a given store or region can differ.
What 5.7 percent does to a produce shelf
Illustrative arithmetic shows the scale. These figures are the writer’s own application of USDA’s forecast to a hypothetical household that spends $20 a week on fresh vegetables, or $1,040 a year, and are not a USDA estimate.
- At the 5.7 percent point forecast, the year’s vegetable spending rises by about $59, to roughly $1,099.
- At the low end of the interval, 4.3 percent, the rise is about $45.
- At the high end, 7.2 percent, the rise is about $75.
On that hypothetical bill, the difference between the two ends of the range is about $30 a year. The more telling comparison is the one a household faces at the register, where a vegetable line that grows by $59 a year has to be paid for out of the same grocery budget as everything else.
The summary gives one index for fresh vegetables as a group. It does not break out tomatoes, potatoes or leafy greens, and it does not say what drives the increase, so no single vegetable should be assumed to have risen by 5.7 percent. A household that buys mostly frozen or canned vegetables is also outside this index, which covers fresh produce only.
Measured prices and the forecast are different things
Because the vegetable number is an annual-average forecast, nothing in it says what a head of lettuce cost on a particular day. The measured side comes from the Consumer Price Index published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which the outlook uses as its raw material. The next CPI release, for September 2026, is scheduled for October 14, 2026 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, and it will add one more month of measured produce prices to the model.
The September 25 summary names Hayden Stewart, Diansheng Dong and Wilson Sinclair as the Economic Research Service contacts for the outlook. Its fresh-vegetable line, 5.7 percent with an interval of 4.3 to 7.2 percent, is the figure from which every other number in this article is derived.
A kit that follows the household bills fresh produce competes with
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This piece was written with the help of an AI assistant and checked against the USDA and Bureau of Labor Statistics pages it cites.
