This is why your Christmas turkey costs more this year

The recent budget put agriculture in the spotlight after changes to inheritance tax left farming families fearful for the future of their businesses. But there is a more urgent threat to farming in Britain – one that impacts us all. At every level of the food chain, from field to plate, people are adapting to the a reality of higher costs and higher prices. 

“It’s been a difficult time for consumers, retailers and farmers overall,” says Tom Holder from the British Retail Consortium. “Consumers are spending more money because goods are more expensive. Inflation is now baked into the system so we’re spending more on our food, our energy, everything. From early 2022 to the end of 2023 the volume of sales was falling, so consumers were spending more and buying less. That volume is now increasing again.” 

But while spending may be returning to normal, farmers are still struggling with increased costs and shrinking profits. The industry has been bruised by inflation more than most as supermarkets squeezed food producers’ prices, and with them their profits, to keep prices down for consumers.

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Agriculture has also been ravaged by Brexit-related staffing costs, as the seasonal European workers farms rely on now require a visa. This is especially problematic for farms that produce Christmas foods like turkeys and Brussels sprouts, which need vast numbers of people for a minimal amount of time to meet the huge peak in demand for the festive season.  

“Each employee now costs us about £500 more before they’ve even been paid a penny,” says Becky Howe, a farmer at John Howe Turkeys, part of the Traditional Farm Fresh Turkey Association of independently run, high-welfare farms. “We only need staff on the farm for three and a half weeks, but the costs incurred by us are exactly the same as a farm that would have somebody for eight months of the year. It gives us a much smaller window to recoup the costs.” 

Howe says such costs are making festive favourites like turkey unaffordable to produce, especially as the Christmas food market is so competitive and supermarkets will always opt for the cheapest produce available to them.  

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“We don’t like working with supermarkets because they don’t play fair,” she says. “They are such vast businesses that they can survive on a 3% profit margin. If you’re a small producer, a 3% profit isn’t going to pay everyone in the family a wage. It’s a different set of circumstances.” 

While there’s no doubt supermarkets demand the cheapest prices possible from farmers, they have little choice if they’re to remain commercially viable. Price is the most important factor for consumers when choosing where to shop, according to 58% of respondents on a YouGov survey about shopping habits. 

“You can’t get away with being frivolously expensive as a supermarket at Christmas, you just won’t sell anything,” explains Holder.  

“It’s a competitive market, and that has led in some cases to prices [paid to farmers] falling. They’re also influenced by global prices, so if the global price of a product falls the price paid to the people producing it will fall.” 

While consumers’ spending patterns have put pressure on supermarkets and farmers to absorb rising costs, shoppers have been left far from unscathed. Food prices have increased by nearly 17% since 2022, leaving many households tightening their belts rather than unbuckling them and enjoying their usual Christmas indulgence. Money Expert found over half of people were cutting back Christmas spending last year.   

However, as food prices have risen, consumers have become progressively savvy in their shopping habits. Almost a third of all food spending was on cut-price items last Christmas, and discount stores Lidl and Aldi reached their highest-ever market share for the Christmas period. Lidl’s sales, for example, in the four weeks leading up to the big day rose by 12% year-on-year, with 4.5 million customers looking to make their money go further. 

Britain has become a nation of festive bargain hunters. This newfound thriftiness, combined with the gradual normalisation of higher prices, is giving many consumers the financial breathing space to have a normal Christmas, albeit with more forward planning than before the cost of living crisis.  

“We may see an increase in food purchasing and people going a little more all-out to make up for that fact that recent Christmases have been a little more cautious for some families,” says Holder.   

But this has not happened without careful thought from those concerned, he explains: “We have seen people balancing the cost of Christmas over a period of time, trying to buy food earlier in the year.”  

Howe agrees, explaining that consumers are more willing to save up to buy premium quality turkeys for Christmas. She says, “People like going to the butchers, they like going to farm shops even if it’s just once a year.”  

Tom Horn is a writer who grew up on a farm.

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