North Dakotans Face Sugar Prices Up Over 6%, While Dairy Barely Budges
With Thanksgiving on Nov. 26, your holiday baking list probably leans on sugar and dairy.
A national USDA forecast says one is climbing much faster than the other.
Here’s what the forecast means for North Dakotans buying sugar and dairy this year.
The Sugar and Sweets Forecast
Sugar and sweets prices are forecast to rise 6.6% in 2026 compared with 2025, according to USDA’s Economic Research Service.
That’s a national forecast, not a North Dakota price.
The forecast interval runs from 5.8% to 7.4%.
It comes from the Food Price Outlook, updated September 25, 2026.
Prices in the category fell 0.3% from July to August 2026.
Even so, they were 6.1% higher than in August 2025.
A dip isn’t a trend.
If you’re watching your budget, keep that 5.8% to 7.4% range in mind alongside the 6.6% midpoint.
The category is also among the seven grocery categories forecast to grow faster than their 20-year average.
The outlook is updated monthly, typically on the 25th, so you can check whether the number has moved since September 25.
How to Read USDA’s Sugar and Sweets Range
USDA’s sugar and sweets forecast arrives as a range, and the 6.6% figure is the middle of it.
Price changes are discussed at the midpoint of each interval.
Its forecasts come from statistical models fitted to recent price trends.
The Dairy Forecast
At your register, dairy prices rose 0.3% from July to August 2026 but were still 0.3% lower than in August 2025.
For the full year, the forecast is a 0.1% rise in 2026, with an interval from a 0.6% drop to a 0.8% rise.
That’s barely a change.
Because the range starts below zero, the forecast leaves room for a small price drop.
USDA lists dairy among six grocery categories forecast to grow slower than their 20-year average.
Farm-level milk is forecast to fall 9.4% in 2026, though that’s the price at the farm, not the one you pay at the store.
Sugar Versus Dairy
USDA’s forecast puts sugar and sweets 6.5 percentage points above dairy for 2026.
The two ranges don’t overlap.
The low end for sugar and sweets is 5.8%, and the high end for dairy is 0.8%.
Food-at-home prices overall, meaning groceries rather than restaurant meals, are forecast to rise 2.4% in 2026, with a range of 1.8% to 3.0%.
That puts sugar and sweets 4.2 points above food at home overall, and dairy 2.3 points below it.
Examples above that overall figure include fresh vegetables at 5.7% and nonalcoholic beverages at 4.2%.
Pork, at 1.2%, and poultry, at 1.0%, come in below it.
Eggs sit at the far other end, forecast to fall 29.4% in 2026.
If your cart leans on sweets, that gap may hit your wallet harder than milk and butter would.
Psst! Which grocery categories are rising, and which are falling? Tap a column heading to sort USDA’s forecast and see where your cart lands.
White Sugar, Butter and Milk
USDA’s sugar and sweets and dairy forecasts describe whole categories, and the items in your kitchen can move differently.
A pound of white sugar averaged $1.024 in August 2026, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
In August 2025, it averaged $1.040.
That’s a drop of about 1.5%.
The sugar and sweets category, meanwhile, was 6.1% higher over those same months.
What you pay at the store can differ from the national picture.
The white sugar series leaves out brown sugar and artificial sweeteners, so it covers only one slice of the category.
Butter averaged $4.021 a pound in August 2026, down from $4.828 a year earlier.
That’s about 17% less.
Whole milk went the other way.
A gallon averaged $4.229 in August 2026, up from $4.171, or about 1.4%.
The bureau says average prices suit measuring a month’s price level better than change over time, so treat these as simple two-month comparisons.
Holiday Baking Math
Let’s run the numbers.
USDA’s 6.6% forecast for sugar and sweets works out to $2.64 more on a $40 bill at 2025 prices.
The same $40 of dairy would cost about 4 cents more at 0.1%.
Across the sugar and sweets range of 5.8% to 7.4%, that $40 would cost $2.32 to $2.96 more.
Across the dairy range, it could land anywhere from 24 cents less to 32 cents more.
If you spend $100 on sugar and sweets instead, the same 6.6% adds $6.60.
Your bill will look different, but the math scales with it.
Split evenly, an $80 cart of the two would cost about $2.68 more, or roughly 3.4%.
The catch? The forecast covers the whole category for 2026, not your store or the holiday weeks, so these numbers are arithmetic and not price tags.
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