David Ortega

And so it's really this perfect storm of factors that are impacting tomato prices.

It's really tough to tease out, well, how much of this price increase is it because of

the war in the Middle East versus the tariffs versus weather, just because all of these things are kind of happening at the same time.

We produce a lot of the oil that we consume here in the United States.

We also produce fertilizer.

Now, we rely on imports of fertilizer, and certainly the world price of fertilizer impacts what our farmers pay.

So where we're going to first start to see this show up are on the perishable food items.

So think specialty produce, dairy products, meat products that have to be refrigerated.

So refrigerated trucking uses up a lot more energy.

Higher fuel and fertilizer costs are expected to ripple through the food supply chain, but not all at once.

David Ortega is an economist at Michigan State University.

He says energy prices are one of the biggest drivers, especially when it comes to transportation.

Ortega says there's often a lag of several months between rising input costs and higher prices at the grocery store, meaning shoppers may not feel the full impact until later this year.

Windsor Johnston, NPR News.

When we look at sort of the bigger picture, the drop in egg prices has been offset by the rice and beef prices.

And that is because the average American family spends about five times more on beef than eggs.