Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, food prices have surged across the country. Personally, I’ve watched my grocery bills climb while the quantity of food in my cart remains unchanged, hence why I wanted to investigate this trend. What economic forces are driving this rise in food prices? And more importantly, which American communities are bearing the greatest burden?


Visualizing the Economic Drivers

To pinpoint the drivers of rising food prices, I wanted to first determine if there was a gap between increases in the value of food and the quantity of food we were importing from countries all over the world. The scatterplot above shows the relationship between import volume and import value over time for the top 3 categories of food the US spends money on importing. The second largest food category of imports, meats, has a steep upwards slope, one that is almost vertical. This indicates that the import value increases at a substantially higher rate than the import volume. The largest category, grains, shows an exponential trend of increase. Starting around 2018, the trend line is very steep (almost vertical) and indicates that the US is paying significantly more money for the same amount of product. The third largest category, vegetables, also has an upward slope, however, it is closer to a linear trend than the other categories.

These trends suggest that for meats and grains, rising import values are not solely driven by increased import volumes, pointing to factors such as inflation, increased production costs in exporting countries, or changing global market dynamics as key contributors to rising US food prices.


Link to Shiny App: https://divyar.shinyapps.io/prodcosts/

While US food import values provide one perspective on the rising cost of food, I also believe it is important to consider the costs associated with domestic production. The interactive visualization above allows us to explore the internal cost structures for various US crops. It presents a detailed breakdown of the 2025 Fiscal Year forecasted production costs for US crops, released by the US Department of Agriculture. In terms of allocated overhead costs, the two largest categories of production across all crops are the opportunity cost of the land and the capital recovery of machinery and equipment. Operating costs for each crop vary more between each category, which can be explained by the various types of production routines. Two items that are most often are the largest are chemicals and fertilizers.

This is important because it highlights the significant financial investments tied up in land and equipment, which are major barriers to entry for new farmers and a substantial portion of the long-term costs of farming. Additionally, when farmers face land and equipment costs, they would need to recoup these expenses through the prices they receive for their crops, which can put upward pressure on food prices. These barriers for new farmers to enter the market can limit competition within agriculture as well, which can also lead to higher prices. Overall, inflation in the price of materials used to produce locally grown food directly correlate to an increase in food price.


The line graph above gives insight into another factor of economic drivers behind rising food prices, which is investigating the trend of production costs. This graph pulls data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and illustrates the relationship between year and food manufacturing unit labor costs. I want to note that the unit labor cost is a relative variable and is factored around the labor cost of 2017, which subsequently has a unit labor cost of 100 in the graph.

As expected, the graph illustrates a general upward trend, indicating that the labor cost required to produce a unit of food has increased over time. However, the rate of increase is not constant. There are two notable periods with particularly steep increases in labor costs: from 2016 to 2017, and again from 2019 to 2023. These increases are significantly higher from one year to another during the past 10 years, which suggests that labor costs have been increasing at a quicker rate than normal. When it costs more for manufacturers to pay their workers, these costs are often transferred to customers buying their products. Therefore, this trend provides strong evidence supporting the hypothesis that increasing labor costs play a role in increasing food prices.

Delving into specific economic factors gave me greater clarity on what the specific reasons for increasing food prices are. After laying this foundation down, I now want to further investigate which American communities are most impacted by these changes.



Mapping the Impact: Food Insecurity and Disparities Across our Communities

While rising food prices affect many citizens, their impact is not felt equally. In this section, I explore the geographic patterns of food insecurity, highlighting the communities that are disproportionately impacted by these economic shifts.

Link to Tableau Animated Map Visualization: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/divya.ramakrishnan6571/viz/FoodInsecurity_17449848824770/FoodInsecurityMap

To illustrate the impact of rising food prices, this animated map displays state-level food insecurity rates across the United States from 2015 to 2022 from data collected from the US Department of Agriculture. Firstly, across the United States, the food insecurity percentage of the population of each state decreases from 2015 to 2019. However, these percentages start increasing again starting from 2020, and are quite high in 2022. One reason for this increase is likely the COVID-19 pandemic, in which many citizens faced economic hardship. These increasing trends directly correlate with the jumps in trends for the economic factors behind food prices as well, such as the slope increase at 2020 on the labor costs line graph and the upward trends of food import values from 2020 onwards on the scatterplot. This correlation leads my to strongly believe that rising food costs is a strong player in increasing food insecurity.

Additionally, something interesting about these trends is that some of the states that had the higher food insecurity percentages from 2015 to 2019 are not the same states that have high percentages from 2020 to 2022. For example, New Mexico (in particular), Arizona, and Wyoming had high percentages pre-COVID, but post-COVID, this shifted to Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana. This shift could be explained by a variety of reasons, including increasing food production costs or decreasing manufacturing supplies, which is something I am interested in exploring more given more access to state-by-state data. Perhaps delving into the correlation between demographics and food insecurity will also help uncover the reason for these trends.


I will now investigate the specifics regarding the relationship between demographic makeup of the US and food insecurity rates from 2018 to 2023. This heat map shows the correlation of food insecurity between race/ethnicity and household composition. Immediately, I notice disparities between both demographics. Hispanic and Black American families have average food insecurity rates above 13%, whereas the White and Other racial/ethnic groups have rates below 14%. Additionally, among the the different household compositions, households with children under 18 years old have the highest rates of food insecurity (averaging around 15%), followed by households with no children under 18 years old and finally households with elderly. Black families with children under 18 years old have the highest food insecurity rates, followed by Hispanic families with children under 18, and Black families with no children under 18. These trends indicate that food insecurity disproportionately affects certain populations in the US, and suggest a need for more resources and effort put into supporting families with children as well as Black and Hispanic families. To gather a better understanding of the specific communities of Americans that are suffering from rising food prices the most, I will look at how different employment statuses and education levels play a role.


I now want to further look into how employment status and education play a role in food insecurity rates, delving deeper into how rising food prices are affecting various different subsections of the American population. Individuals who are retired and employed full-time have the lowest rates of food insecurity, whereas individuals who are unemployed, work part time due to economic reasons, and who are disabled have the highest rates of food insecurity. It is surprising to see that individuals who work part-time have a higher respective median, 25th, and 75th percentiles of food insecurity that that of individuals who are unemployed. Perhaps this is due to unemployment being less permanent than part-time employment. Additionally, the disparity between retired individuals’ food insecurity rates and that of individuals with disabilities is shocking - there is roughly a 45% difference. This disparity highlights the profound impact that systemic barriers, limited income opportunities, and additional healthcare costs have on individuals with disabilities, emphasizing the urgent need for more inclusive and equitable support systems that address the unique vulnerabilities of this population.

Regarding educational attainment, individuals with lower levels of education experience significantly higher and more variable rates of food insecurity. In contrast, those with higher educational qualifications, including bachelor’s and graduate degrees, exhibit lower median insecurity rates. It’s also interesting how higher educational attainment have narrower distributions, with their 25th and 75th percentile rates being quite close to one another. The distributions gradually widen as education level decreases. In the context of rising food prices, these observations suggest that the burden of increased costs is falling disproportionately on individuals with lower educational attainment, who may lack the financial resources or accessible stable employment to buffer against such shocks.



Conclusion

While rising food prices are a nationwide issue, their burden is not evenly distributed. Economic forces such as increased import costs, rising domestic production expenses, and growing labor costs help explain why prices continue to climb. However, the impacts of these changes are most deeply felt by marginalized communities, particularly families with children, individuals with lower educational attainment, part-time workers, and people with disabilities. Food is a basic necessity, and should be equally affordable and accessible to everyone. These insights underscore the importance of targeted policy interventions and support systems to ensure food security remains attainable for all, especially as the economic ripple effects of the pandemic continue to shape everyday life.