US lettuce prices chopped as costs for other goods remain stubbornly high

At the Republicans’ midterm convention held earlier this week, Donald Trump said that “food prices and almost every other item are rapidly going down”. Fresh inflation data on Friday told a different story – but in one specific case, costs have been chopped.The price of lettuce dropped dramatically this summer after the cyclospora outbreak caused demand to wilt, with prices dropping even further in August, according to new data released on Friday.The crop was closely linked to the diarrhea-causing parasite that has seen more than 19,500 confirmed cases in the US since May – 16 times the cases that were seen in the same period in 2025.The outbreak spread to 20 states, with just more than 1,000 hospitalizations and two deaths, according to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The spread was linked to iceberg lettuce that has since been recalled, and the agency said that it “remains confident that all recalled iceberg lettuce related to this specific cyclospora outbreak is off the market”.There’s no dressing up the hit the lettuce industry has taken. New price data released on Friday showed that lettuce prices dropped another 6.2% from July to August. Prices had already gone down 16.4% the month prior, the largest decrease in recent history.The economics behind food prices are often a mixed bag, but experts say there is a strong connection between lower lettuce prices and the cyclospora outbreak. As consumers learned about reports linking the parasite to iceberg lettuce, they stopped eating all types of greens.“That’s a very consistent case here,” said David Ortega, a food economics and policy professor at Michigan State University. “People cut back on not just all lettuce, or a lot of lettuce, but even other produce just out of fear.”This put many food chains in a crunch. Though Sweetgreen wasn’t linked to the outbreak, the salad chain cut its outlook for the year in August, citing a fall in foot traffic. Chipotle reported sales were down 2% in the second half of July, though the chain “maintains a very robust food safety program”. Taco Bell, which was directly linked to the outbreak, said it experienced a “meaningful” short-term impact on sales, though that had been “steadily improving”.Before the outbreak, lettuce prices were increasing due to other supply constraints, including adverse weather and disease that were affecting harvests, Ortega said. The drop in demand seems to have somewhat stabilized lettuce prices to where they were a year ago: from August 2025 to August 2026, prices dropped just 2.2%.It’s a tossup as to whether the drop in lettuce prices will alleviate any of the pain Americans have been feeling over higher prices. The ongoing war in Iran has boosted energy prices, with the US cost of diesel, which is essential for transportation within the supply chain, breaching $6 a gallon for the first time ever. Gas prices on average are $1.10 a gallon more expensive than last year, and fuel oil, which is used to heat homes, was up 52% for the year in August.Trump’s trade war with Canada, one of the US’s closest trading partners, is also expected to affect prices, with tariffs expected to affect everything from liquor to toilet paper.Canada is also a major agricultural trading partner with the US. Imports from Canada made up a total of 18.5% of the US’s total agricultural imports in 2025, according to the US Department of Agriculture. The US is Canada’s largest agricultural trading partner, buying up 60.3% of the country’s total agricultural exports.Over the last few days, Trump – who last month said that “prices are coming down very rapidly” – has started to acknowledge that the economy for US consumers isn’t as rosy as he has portrayed. He voiced his prediction that oil prices will go “tumbling downward” after the election, as Iran is “desperate to try and affect the election”.At the Republican convention, Trump said that he would give Americans a $5,000 “dividend” if Republicans keep control of Congress after the midterms, a move critics said was a blatant bribe, and blamed Democrats for the higher prices.“I’m asking you to let us finish the job we began,” he said.