Economy Service
With the announcement of October’s inflation rates just days away, preliminary data on price increases were published one after another. Research indicating a high rate of increase, particularly in food expenditure, was particularly noteworthy.
Unchecked food inflation continues to rise every month. Data from TZOB, TEPAV, İTO, and Türk-İş once again revealed the shrinking shopping cart. The Union of Turkish Chambers of Agriculture (TZOB) published its research on input costs and the price gap from field to table for October.
While every product in fields and orchards is suffering losses, consumers are also struggling to access food due to the price tags on the shelves. The gap between farm and table widened again this month. By October 2025, the gap between producer prices and market prices for foods such as potatoes, onions, lettuce and parsley reached 380% from 230 %. The increase in market prices also multiplied. The price per kilo of potatoes, which was 19.08 lira a month ago, reached 25.35 lira. Onion prices rose from 14.51 lira to 18.90 lira, tomatoes from 37.35 lira to 46.46 lira, and spring onions from 43.19 lira to 48.47 lira. The monthly increase for zucchini was from 46.49 lira to 51.02 lira, and for chickpeas, from 109.70 lira to 115.31 lira.
COSTS CANNOT BE COVERED
When potato prices peaked, the Ministry of Trade issued a statement saying, ‘The average retail price of potatoes is 12.75 lira, and figures such as 25 lira do not reflect general market prices.’
The increase in input costs also compounded the producers’ losses. According to TZOB calculations, diesel prices recorded an annual increase of 30.4 % in October. The annual increase rate was 63.1 % for URE fertiliser, 31.8 % for feed, 14.9 % for agricultural pesticides, and 12.8 % for electricity.
While input costs, which affect food inflation, increased, the cost of grocery shopping continued to rise in different calculations. According to the Food Price Index for October 2025 published by the Turkish Economic Policies Research Foundation (TEPAV), food prices increased by 2.70% monthly, with annual inflation measured at 32.3%. In the Consumer Price Index published by the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce (İTO), the monthly increase in the food and non-alcoholic beverages group was 4.05% and the annual increase was 39.19%. Türk-İş announced its poverty and starvation threshold research the previous day, determining that food inflation, which it measured as ‘kitchen inflation’, was 1.58% monthly and 39.06% annually in October. Türk-İş calculations revealed that expenditures used to calculate the starvation threshold, which indicates access to healthy food, had increased by 107% in two years.
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ANNUAL INFLATION IN THE MEGACITY IS 40.84 %
In İstanbul, retail prices increased by 3.31% and wholesale prices by 1.51% in October compared to the previous month. According to the İstanbul Chamber of Commerce’s (İTO) İstanbul Consumer Price Index and Wholesale Goods Price Index data for October, the İTO İstanbul Consumer Price Index, which indicates retail price fluctuations in the city, increased by 3.31% in October compared to the previous month. The increase in the Wholesale Goods Price Index, which reflects wholesale price movements, was 1.51%. The rate of change in retail prices in October compared to the same month last year was 40.84%, while the rate of change in wholesale prices was 23.78%. The monthly increase rate in October was 17.26 % for clothing and footwear, 5.42 % for the communication expenditure group, 4.05 % for food and non-alcoholic beverages, 3.97 % for restaurants and hotels, alcoholic beverages and tobacco at 2.38%, various goods and services at 2.33%, housing expenditure at 2.21%, household goods at 2.02%, recreation and culture at 1.39%, and transport at 0.61%.
Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Yurttaş gıdaya bile erişemiyor, published in BirGün newspaper on November 2, 2025.
