Fall 2026 Grocery Prices Just Got Worse — Here's What I'm Doing Now

Everything I’ve been tracking points toward fall 2026 being a rough season for grocery budgets. I’m going to show you exactly what I’m seeing — and what I’m doing about it right now, while summer is still here.
A former USDA economist has specifically warned that food price inflation will intensify "towards the end of the growing and harvesting season — late summer." This video explains exactly why he's right, which specific categories are at greatest risk, and what the summer window means for your family's food security.

Sources: USDA Economic Research Service Food Price Outlook (April 2026), Dr. Richard Volpe / FoodNavigator-USA (May 2026), Spins market research analysts / FoodNavigator-USA, American Farm Bureau Federation Market Intel, USDA WASDE May 2026, Pro Farmer Crop Condition Index (June 2026), US Wheat Associates Harvest Report June 3, 2026, NOAA Summer 2026 Temperature Outlook, Rabobank / FoodNavigator tariff lag analysis.
New videos every week on pantry preparedness, food security, and building real resilience for your family.

Transcript

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A few months ago, I sat right in this exact spot and I told you that fall and winter 2026 could be one of the hardest seasons for grocery budgets. And I'm afraid I was right. Now I'm back, and I need to tell you that what I was tracking then has gotten more serious. It has. Not less, definitely not less. The the problem, you know, problems, they haven't resolved, and they're not going too soon. They have actually compounded, and there are new ones layered, because why not? Uh on top of the ones that weren't even in the picture a few months ago. Fall 2026 here in the US is shaping up to be rough. I don't know how else to explain it, okay? Possibly significantly rougher than what we have seen so far this year. Definitely. And I want to walk you through exactly what I'm seeing, exactly why I believe it, and most importantly, what we can do about it right now, today, over the course of the next 60 days. Hello everyone, and welcome to Sutton's Days. If you're new here, my name is Lisa, and we are all about pantry preparedness. Now we have been talking about this, you know, May, June, and I'm providing you with the links. I'll provide you with the playlists that have these in case you miss them. Uh, but it's something that I I have never wanted to be wrong so bad in my entire life. I want to be wrong. I want them to prove me wrong. I just don't see how that's gonna happen. But here is the thing that I want you to hold on to throughout this entire video. Summer is always, always, regardless of what's going on, the best window. Okay. Summer is when seasonal produce is abundant and relatively affordable. Summer is when the urgency of fall, because there is an urgency, and winter, you know, it hasn't registered yet with most people. They're not thinking about it, they're too busy playing in the sand or the pool or going on whatever vacation. Summer is when you can act at the lowest cost with the most options, and that's important because you want to be able to be sure that you can do this before the pressure arrives. So, everything that I'm telling you today, I'm telling you now, at the beginning of July, essentially, on purpose. There's an you know, there's a purpose behind this because what you do in the next 60 to 90 days will determine what your fall and winter look like. If you have watched my videos from the last couple of months uh about you know fall and winter grocery budgets, first of all, I want to say thank you, thank you very much. Um, and from your comments, a lot of you told me it prompted you to begin preparing, it prompted you to begin building a pantry. And that's good. That was exactly the point. It's more important than it has been in a really long time, even though I think it's always been important. For a lot of people, if it hasn't resonated before, I'm hoping that it resonates now exactly how important it's going to be. But for anyone who did not see it, I'm gonna give you the short and condensed version. You know, uh basically what I said is that the cattle herd is smaller than it has been since 1951, and we have three times as many people in this country that our imports were stopped because of screw worm, and that there just is no way to make up that difference. And now screw worm landed here, so we're still waiting to see exactly how that plays out. Supply chains have been stressed for years, absolute years now. Okay, we've been dealing with this since 2020 essentially, and they're not being fixed, they're not being addressed, they're definitely not being improved upon. Then there's the closing of the processors, the condensing of the amount of processors that are out there. There's so much. There's the uh lack of rain and fertilizer, so we're expecting significantly smaller crops. Uh, the wheat is being impacted, the the crops that we grow as feed for livestock, that's being impacted. And yes, for my vegetarians, your soy is being impacted also, so tofu doesn't come out of the sky. Now, all of this has just compounded. It's like filling up the bingo card at a record rate. Now, the combination of all of those pressures I said is going to make fall and winter of 2026 more expensive in the grocery department than it has ever been. All of that has happened, all of that is going on. It's actually stacking more and more on top of each other, and so I really believe it's gonna be even more difficult than what I initially stated. Families who have consistently bought these same stuff, you know, over time, constantly, um, are seeing their grocery bills impacted significantly. I mean, in some cases, up 40%. A lot of people are saying they've been priced out of beef for quite some time now. And when the pressure comes off of beef, it moves over onto poultry, which is also seeing pressure, and eventually it's going to move on to pork. So that pressure doesn't go away, it just gets transferred to a new section. Then you're looking at olive oil, you're looking at coffee, you're looking at chocolate, you're looking, there's so much, there's even issues with sugar. So all of this just keeps compounding, and it's painful, you know. The answers based on everything that I'm tracking right now is that it's gonna stay hard for the foreseeable future. Now, here is here is the single most important thing that I want to tell you uh in this video, and it it comes directly from Dr. Richard Volp, I think I'm pronouncing that right, a former USDA economist who now teaches at Cal Poly. Uh, he has looked at the data for 2026, and here is what he said: direct quote I do think that food price inflation will actually intensify towards the end of the growing and harvesting seasonslash late summer. A former USDA economist, not a prepper, not a fear-based, you know, content creator, because you know they're all out there, a credentialed agricultural economist who has spent his entire career studying exactly this thing. And he is saying that the second half of 2026, late summer, into fall, into winter, is when grocery budgets are going to feel the absolute most pressure. Now, before I get into you know a little bit more specific things, I'm not going huge in depth. Uh, I want to explain the three structural forces that are converging this fall because I think it's important to understand why this is happening, how it's happening. Um, understanding that mechanism is what helps you make good decisions. And we're here to help you make good decisions because that saves a lot of money and a lot of time, and honestly, a lot of heartbreak. It's not just buy more things, okay, but actually understanding what's coming for which categories and why. And that will help you decide which things you need to stock up on moving into this difficult season. So, number one is the terra flag. And this is one that most people don't understand, they just they don't get, you know, we see the catchphrases online or whatever the news is pushing out for the day, but it's the most important for fall 2026 specifically. Uh, when significant tariffs on imports were imposed early in 2025, most of the media covered the immediate, you know, political reaction to it. Nobody really looked farther than that. What got less attention is what happens downstream. We are officially downstream, we're there. So it takes the system, the whole system, a certain amount of time for those tariff implications to catch up. They are catching up. They they are they are arriving at our doorstep today. None of it happens overnight, but it takes a little bit of time to work its way through the pipeline, you know. When they first mentioned the tariffs, you know, everybody kind of panicked a little bit, but most everybody, you know, out there, the the manufacturers, the retailers, that kind of thing, they had an existing inventory. They had already kind of preset stuff up for the upcoming seasons. And so they just, you know, negotiate with suppliers, they try to protect their margins without triggering consumer backlash because you know, when we kick in with the backlash, it's very noticeable. But that absorption, it has a limit, they can only take the loss for so long, and that limit is now being reached. We're there, we're just kind of waiting to bubble over the top, you know. Analysts at the market research firm Spins warned specifically that the US significantly increased the tariff cost or the tariff burden on importers, and that CPG brands and grocery retailers likely will need to raise prices in mid to late 2026, because that's when everything catches up to them, and then they have to, you know, put it out onto us. The phrase they used mid to late 2026, that's fall. That's that's autumn, you know. That's exactly what we're talking about. Once we get past summer, now the 12 to 18 month lag, because that's how long it takes between the tariffs when they were imposed and when they fully reach our grocery store shelves, it's a documented pattern. This is not something that, you know, oh, I'm reading the cards. No, that's not it. It's a documented pattern. Those tariffs were imposed roughly 12 to 18 months ago. That window is now closing. I mean, it's you know, we're down to a couple of inches at this point. And fall 2026 is when the bill is going to arrive. And anybody that has been waiting on a large bill to show up at the door, you know what that feels like, right? The sad news is that the bill is coming. It was set in motion over a year ago, and most American families have no idea what is about to land, they are not paying attention. Even if they are in pain at the grocery store, we just have this misguided assumption that things are gonna be okay, things are gonna write themselves, and you know, we'll figure out a way to do this, even though at this point we haven't had beef in two months, you know, and things are getting really tight, and I'm not getting half the groceries I used to for the same amount of money, but I'm still getting paid the same or potentially less. And what are we gonna do now? But they don't actually think about what to do moving forward. So if you run into any of those people, okay, we have two months. We have two months to build a little bit of a buffer, a cushion. Consider it kind of like an emergency fund, if you will, so that when we hit that emergency, we can utilize it. Is it supposed to last you the rest of your God-given life? No, it is not. It is just adding a buffer in there so that it does not hurt as bad, so that you are eating at yesterday's prices while all of your friends and neighbors, because they didn't listen, are eating at the extreme inflated prices when they can find it on the shelves. Now, the concerning news is, you know, wheat is a completely different story. As of late June, going into July, right now, as I'm filming this, okay, winter wheat is rated 44% very poor to poor. That's the rating that it's gotten. Only 26% is rated good to excellent. Drought has been hitting the southern plains hard, really hard. West Texas specifically has had severe drought stress uh on winter wheat through much of the growing season. And NOAA's summer 2026 weather outlook, you know, projects above average temperatures across most of the country, which compounds heat and drought stress on crops that are still developing. Now, wheat rating and final yield, they're not the same thing, okay. What I'm telling you is that the key crop is showing significant stress right now, that summer weather is projected to be warmer than average, and that both of these things, okay, matter for what's going to be on the shelves in November and December. And importantly, a former USDA economist is already saying food inflation will intensify in late summer. That statement was made before the June crop conditions came in. So before that was even out, they were already saying this. He's saying it from the underlying structure that he does understand, that he does live with day to day. The crop conditions just add a whole nother variable to the whole mess. Now, the cattle problem, the cattle problem has been building and building and building for years. And it's at the crescendo part right now. We we have gone over that edge. They are just not able to breed enough fast enough because it takes a certain amount of time, you know, and then raise them to the point where they are producing meat. A very large percentage of our beef was coming in from Mexico, but a year ago that stopped due to the screw worm disease. We weren't importing anymore. Now, because diseases don't know borders, that has made it over the border into our country. It is still undetermined how negatively that is going to impact our food supplies. We just don't know. It was already hammered, but now it's potentially going to get much worse. Citrus growing in Florida, that has no cure. There's no cure there. A lot of you have told me that you can't even find orange juice anymore, you know. That's not going to be different in October from today. It's if anything, it's going to be worse. Bird flu in the poultry sector, you know, is coming and going. I think we're becoming desensitized to it actually. Um, so it hasn't been eradicated. They're not going to eradicate something the way that the way that the chickens are being, you know, raised, taken care of, the eggs are being produced, so on and so forth. It's been managed and egg prices are down significantly from where they were, you know, about a year and a half ago or so. But the structural vulnerability, it's still 100% there, and then some. Any resurgence would be felt in the fall or the winter when the flu tends to be more active. Now, let me get specific because general warnings don't help anybody, they're not actionable. Okay. What you need to know is which categories are going to feel the most this fall, so that you're not going all willy-nilly getting stuff that's not going to be as impacted as other things. Uh, so you can prioritize where to act now because two months. So I'm gonna go through seven categories with you. Uh, for each one, I'm gonna tell you what I'm seeing now because I think that that's important, and what the fall outlook looks like, and what I'm personally doing about it. Number one is beef. Okay, that's just ongoing and potentially gonna get significantly worse. Now, the USDA's April 2026 data showed beef and veal prices up 3.1% in March, just one month. Year over year, uh, at that point, that's 12.1% above the prior year, 12% in a year. And I personally think that's kind of low. Okay. The forecast for the full year 2026 that ranges from 5.5 to 9.4, depending on the model. And again, we're seeing, or at least it feels like we're seeing significantly higher prices than what they're stating. So we already know why, you know, we've already covered that. Uh, what I'm doing right now, because you guys know, as I stated last week, I am pretty much done long-term stocking. I'm just backfilling as I see necessary at this point, but I still have half a beef showing up sometime this fall. So, what I'm doing right now is I'm concentrating on the beef. Buying ground beef, if you can find it on sale, uh at a good price. And every now and then it pops up, okay? I pressure can it immediately. I want it out of the freezer and on the shelf. Now I save a few just for good measure because sometimes you'll like a burger or maybe some meatloaf or you know, something like that. But for the most part, I pressure can mine. Every jar that I put on my shelf right now, every jar that I have on my shelf right now, is one that I won't have to buy after October. And that's important because October's prices are going to be much worse than today's prices. So now let's talk some wheat because wheat's important. Uh, the USDA is forecasting farm level wheat prices to increase 10.1% in 2026. Farm level prices lead retail prices by roughly 6 to 12 months. Current winter wheat crop conditions are 44%, very poor to poor. Even if the final yield comes in better than the current conditions suggest that they're going to, uh, the prices, the price direction is up. It's still going to go up. How much is undetermined. For practical purposes, bread, flour, pasta, crackers, cereals, you know, all the things that you make with wheat. These are categories where I expect to see noticeable price increases in the fall and winter menus. Definitely. That's it's has no place to go but up. There are also categories where buying ahead and storing now is genuinely effective because flour and pasta they store beautifully. Pasta longer than flour, commercially ground flour, one to two years tops. Airtight container is all you need. Okay. Now, category number three is canned and packaged goods, because this is again where the tariff lag hits. But it's not only for the contents of the cans, it's the actual cans themselves, it's the metals. Now, a specific quote from spins analysts brands and retailers likely will need to raise prices in mid to late 2026. That's your grocery aisle in September, October, and November. So that's what's going on there. That means that every canned good you buy now is priced at pre-negotiation costs. So we're getting yesterday's prices right now. And they will likely need to raise prices in mid to late 2026. So that means that after fall, the prices have no place to go but up because the cost of the materials is up. This is one of the clearest cases. We're acting now, literally right now, for the things that you buy in cans from the stores has a measurable financial benefit. Number four, non-alcoholic beverages. This is kind of the quiet one, right? You know, but non-alcoholic beverages include coffee. And coffee is a leader in this price hike, definitely, because it's continuing its elevated trajectory. It's not going to go lower. And it has risen over 75% from late 2022. 75% in four years, under four years. That's a heck of a price hike. And for any coffee drinkers, you know exactly what I'm talking about. But it's not just coffee, okay? If you have a household that depends on coffee or soda or juice or any packaged drink, the direction is up. So you want to build your buffer now. Stock up on it now. Category five fresh fruits and vegetables. This one's gonna be a butt kicker, I swear. So, as I covered before, fresh produce is now. Right now is when this is all coming in throughout the next two months, okay? But our season for fresh produce has a kind of a finite timeline on it because seasons, weather you know, conditions, that kind of fun stuff. So after that, 69% of 69% okay of US vegetable imports and 51% of fresh fruit imports, they come from Mexico. These numbers haven't changed the tariff situation isn't resolved. So guess what's going to go up significantly? And they're already up. Anybody buying tomatoes? Yeah, you know that. Okay. Your bell peppers, everything else. I have not seen them come down significantly, but I know that they were up to begin with. And then now that the season is here, uh they're just kind of stagnating. But plan on the fact that they're gonna go up by the end of the growing season in this country. So what I do about this literally right now is preserve produce now while it's at its peak availability and its seasonal pricing because seasonal pricing is where it's all at. You always want to preserve as much of the harvest when it's in season as you can to get through the off season. Category number six is cooking oils. We've covered this extensively okay olive oil is undergoing pressure from both the EU tariff situation and the global harvest stress. There's a lot of things kicking into this over the last two years we have already seen our selection go down significantly in olive oil choices and the prices go up. This goes with a whole bunch of oils but olive oil is particularly noticeable for anybody that regularly uses. Now fall is when household cooking oil tends to increase that's that's what the patterns show. More soups more roasting more baking you know all that stuff happens as it gets cooler. So higher demand season meeting tighter supply and higher cost that's a problematic combination on its best day. So anything that you can do to stock up now for later is a good thing. Don't overstock on the oils but you can refrigerate it and you can freeze most of the oils they'll be perfectly good to use when you're ready to use them. Pull them out not as a per use basis but as you know I'm gonna pull this bottle out and use it until it's gone and let it completely you know defrost and it's perfectly good. You can do it. Don't overthink it. Just stick it in the freezer now category number seven is sugar and baking supplies and this one took me by surprise the first time that I reported on it but you know it's the seasonal double yay you know USDA specifically forecasts sugar and sweet prices to rise 6.7% in 2026. The timing is particularly painful because fall and winter are peak baking seasons peak. You've got the holidays you've got Halloween candy Thanksgiving pies Christmas cookies you know all that fun stuff these categories that get more expensive just as you need to use them more and more so here's the strategy that I have employed for quite some time okay baking supplies flour sugar baking powder vanilla they're worth buying ahead of time buy what you know you're going to use when it comes to actual you know commercially ground flour the rest of it has a pretty decent shelf life these prices will be lower in July than they will be in November. That's a given that's always been true seasonally about any category but you know we're concentrating on baking here. The tariff pressure makes it more true this year than most years. I want to spend just a couple minutes on you know something that I think is the most actionable part of this entire video okay summer is a window it is a window specifically it's a window that closes and I have said this many times over the course of the last two months we have been given an unprecedented window of opportunity to see how to best prepare if we bother to read the signs. If we bother to pay attention most people are not paying attention I am asking you to be the people that do and I'm hoping that you're here because you are the people that do pay attention. Now let's talk about a specific action plan because you can talk about bad news until your face falls off but you need an actionable plan to make sure that you're doing the best that you can to stave off a lot of this discomfort okay so let me give you a specific action plan we're gonna break it down not a general stock up on things and I'm gonna walk away I no I'm not doing that okay specific action plan recommendations actual priorities in order uh with specific quantities if I can give them if I can I mean everybody's house is completely different right so priority one is proteins that should be your number one focus because that is what most people miss because that is the most expensive part of the entire thing your proteins are your most expensive part of your budget. So focus on the proteins whether you can them yourself whether you freeze dry them whether you buy them freeze dried whether you buy them commercially canned however you do it stock up on your proteins if you freeze them then you want to make sure that you are sealing them up better than the way that you brought them home from the store. You want to make sure that you are vacuum sealing them super important for the best quality for the longest amount of time okay so look at your ground beef definitely look at your canned tuna your salmon your mackerel you know that kind of stuff if you can find chicken on sale great beans my friends beans are good for you they really are I don't eat beans okay then buy a steak but you can cook beans so many ways and they are so good for you fiber that trust me your body needs okay and protein it's a beautiful thing. Now priority number two is the seasonal produce preservation because we are in this window and so we need to make it a priority beef or meat period first proteins first because that's the most expensive seasonal produce second very close on the heels of your proteins because it's in season right now which means the best prices and the freshest and best quality are going to be right now. So look at your things like your uh peppers you know roast and freeze your bell peppers dehydrate your hot peppers pressure can your salsa this will cost two to three times as much or be unavailable in January that's how serious this is so I don't want to hear you saying in January I can't find any bell peppers that don't cost you know six dollars don't say I didn't tell you I'm telling you right now it's important green beans corn carrots all of these are summer crops every single one of them is a summer crop they pressure can very well okay or they freeze very well so those things uh definitely tomatoes I cannot stress tomatoes enough so if you are not planting a garden right now you can still go out and buy a case of tomato sauce diced tomatoes stewed tomatoes salsas pasta sauces whatever the case you can buy a case of each and put them up on your shelf and they're good for quite a while okay so get ahead of the curve get them now while you can ten dollars twelve dollars and you have a case of diced tomatoes ten or twelve dollars you have a case of you know uh Rotel or Rotel type tomatoes okay whatever it is that your household use and figure out how much you use on a monthly basis because you're probably gonna want to stock up a few months worth priority number three is your baking supplies get in there get the flour that's gonna see you through the holiday season get the sugar get the baking powder the baking soda the vanilla the baking chips all of those right these are small purchases but they matter more than people realize it's the whole morale thing you know buy enough for six months of baking because it stores beautifully for all of that give yourself six months of a buffer so that you can watch what the prices are doing and plan your budget accordingly as you move forward you want to make sure that you're getting through the holiday season because I know how important it is for a lot of people now priority number four that's your cooking oils okay uh you want to get them when they're as stable as they can be and right now is as stable as they are going to be so stock up a little bit on your cooking oil. Like I said you have to know how much you use take a wild guess because you're gonna need to keep it in the refrigerator or the freezer for any long term longer than a year you know so don't overstock this one. This is one of those things eventually we're gonna have to bite the bullet but we can stave it off for a little while plan on that holiday stuff. What do you normally cook on the you know during during the holidays that you want to make sure you have oil for that's what you get. Priority number five are your non-alcoholic beverages aka coffee okay tea is going to be okay it's gonna go up a bit but it's not gonna go anywhere near as coffee now coffee has already gone up exponentially 75% since 2022 okay you are not going to go wrong stocking up on coffee. Look at the expiration date on the canister that you purchase it's normally at least a year out. So pay attention to that if you get whole beans you store them in the freezer it's just that simple. If you have room in your freezer then you can store the ground stuff in your freezer too that stops the clock and extends the amount of time that you have to use it. Always mark down when you bought it compared to the date if you stick it in the freezer so that you can do the math to figure out how long you've got. If you're a serious coffee drinker like somebody you might know then just rotate through it but backstock the heck out of it. Okay now let me do a really seriously rough budget. This is hard rough of course it's going to be different depending on where you're at okay but take this as just kind of a guesstimate. So ground beef 20 pounds at 650 a pound comes up to $130. Canned tuna two cases of 24 is about $90. Dried beans 25 pounds worst case $40. Tomatoes okay 25 pounds fresh tomatoes if you're gonna can them yourself $25. And that's really lowballing it because I think it's gonna be a lot more now $25 for flour 25 pounds. $20 for sugar $5 $20 for cooking oil you get about a gallon you know uh coffee $35 should be about a three month supply depending on how much you use uh maybe $40 maybe more depends on how much you use the total is approximately around $400 to stock up on those categories that are going to be the highest impacted that is not a single shopping trip. Not by any stretch of the imagination am I recommending that okay this is four to six weeks of intentional buying strategic buying adding categories each week because you don't do this all at once successfully ever now distributing the cost across your normal grocery budget uh you're not going to feel it as bad definitely not as bad most families can absorb $75 to $100 of intentional pantry building per week without significant financial disruption I said most not all so don't come at me for that one okay and what you get for that $400 ish dollars depending on where you live built over six weeks is a pantry that can absorb the fall and winter pricing pressure without changing what your family eats you're buying your October and November groceries not all of it just certain categories at June prices anything that you can eat today for yesterday's prices is a win. Now I want to point you to wwwthestackpantry dot com okay um this is where I have curated all of the different things that I purchased myself that I use practically on the daily and that I do highly recommend. So if you have any questions about freeze dried food about freeze drying you know equipment about canning equipment about vacuum sealers about mylar and oxygen absorbers any of that stuff products that I flat out recommend it will be at that website. Definitely I hope that you will check it out. As always the only things I put on there are things that I use myself and that I'm willing to attach my name to I take that very seriously and I really feel like this is an exceptionally good time to mention Thrivalist because July is coming up you want to pay attention to this I'll have the specifics for you literally on July 1st epic site wide sale for the first 12 days celebrating the 250th something you want to take advantage of to stock up on your freeze dried food if you delegate like I do. I can't do everything I know I can't do everything and so I delegate I trust Thrivalist I believe in their product I have tried other products as you may know since Thrive Life closed and this is the company that I landed with and I have been spectacularly impressed. High high quality good prices they have the pantry cans you know the smaller cans and they also have the number 10 cans they have different sales every single month it's a company that I believe in my links will be down below and also at thestackedpantry.com if you have any questions please reach out to me I'll do my best to answer you as quickly as possible but look for that sale you'll know that you're shopping with me if you see my name on the top of the website and I appreciate being your connector I really do and I take that very seriously too so if you have any questions at all reach out to me and I will help you reach out to them and we'll make it all happen. But here's the thing and something that I'm very serious about that tariff lag all of those increased costs that's going to affect them too. It has not yet but it's going to affect them too. So what better time to stock up than now before it has before the prices have gone up it's a really good time to take a look and see what you can do to shore up any holes to delegate some of that work because it's a lot of work and so sometimes it's just better to give it to somebody else to do. Okay now this one is going to be a little bit different you know but I hope you'll hang with me I want to do something that I think distinguishes this channel from a lot of what you'll find in the preparedness space a lot I'm gonna tell you what would make me wrong and I have never wanted to be wrong more in my entire life. I really wish I was wrong. If the summer growing season comes in better than current suggest current conditions suggest okay if adequate rainfall suddenly comes you know from to the plains if temperatures moderate if the 2026 corn and soybean crops perform at their projected levels and carry commodity costs down then some of the pressure I'm describing will be less severe than what I'm projecting. If tariff negotiations produce agreements that meaningfully reduce the import cost burden meaningfully okay and some of that already has started so we can cross our fingers on this one with a few trade deals that are in place then the tariff lag that I'm describing may be partially offset. We need to wait and see on that one okay if the screw worm situation in South Texas is contained quickly and the US-Mexico cattle border reopens that would meaningfully help the beef supply in 2027 not this year 2027 and though that's not fast enough to change the you know fall 2026 prices significantly um it's still you know cattle biology that we have to deal with it will still lighten the load after that because without that we're looking at 2028 2029 before we see any kind of relief and I mean two to three years later do you really think the prices are going to go down I don't think so I'm telling you this not to hedge your bets on that okay but because I think that you deserve the whole picture the whole picture some things could happen where it could change what I'm telling you it could change the outcome the structural case for fall 2026 price pressure is strong from just about every possible angle that you can look at it. It is strong that we're gonna get hit. But there are scenarios where you know the impact is less severe than the worst case. So we can cross our fingers we just have to pay attention really that's the big part paying attention and I don't want you to act from fear never from fear that it's a waste of energy okay I want you to act from information which is why I tell you the what the why the how and how to best act now to stave off any of the discomfort moving forward the action I'm recommending building the buffer during the summer because this is the window that we're in unprecedented vantage point of seeing what's coming down the pike okay is the right call even if I'm wrong about the severity even if I'm wrong it will still benefit you at the end. The downside the risk of not acting of waiting until October to see what happens okay is that you're shopping into whatever the fall prices actually are you're not saving the money that you could save with no buffer with no options that's the scenario that I want to help you avoid because I think that's the really uncomfortable scenario. So I want to close with something that I think is more important than any specific category that I mentioned today okay summer is power. Summer is power this summer more than ever before is power. Right now at the start of July you have more options than you will have in September. That's a fact you have better prices than you'll have in October and you have more time to act without urgency than you will have in November. The summer window is not just a season of opportunity it is a planning advantage that closes that window will be closing in about 60 days and the people who feel the most secure in the fall when it arrives are almost never the people who prepared in the fall you cannot prepare during an emergency. That's not the time to do it. I mean you can but it's gonna cost you a whole lot more and you're gonna have a whole lot less options. I have been doing this for a long time now okay and every single year the people who come to me in October saying they wish they'd done something sooner they wish that they had been paying attention they're right they're absolutely right they do wish they'd done something sooner because they feel it harder than anybody that has taken the time to prepare you're at the start of July that's earlier than most people start thinking about this much earlier. That means you have an advantage use it not all at once not in a panic strategically intentionally over the next six to eight weeks okay you can do this. Summer is your window that window closes in September act now while it's open until next time everybody be safe keep stacking it to the rafters my friends