VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: At CNY Regional Market, rising grocery prices send shoppers local, but growers face squeeze of their own
Danny Erb: Will Dewire is live at the CNY Regional Market with the story
Will Dewire: Here at the CNY Regional Market, it’s as much about the prices as well as the freshness of the food, that’s driving shoppers into these stalls. The headlines point to tariffs and heightened grocery bills, but here, those same pressures are making the market busier. And for shoppers like Casey Kiskadden, climbing grocery prices have turned an occasional trip into a regular one.
Casey Kiskadden: It’s more of a reaction to have expensive it is, like the grocery store is convenient, we even have the subscription services for delivery, but sometimes when it comes to the money, it’s just easier.
Dewire: She’s not the only one. Vendors say more shoppers are discovering what’s long been true here. The local can beat the grocery store on price and freshness
Benjamin Paine: I hate to say it, but people need to go to the grocery store. They get better variety, and they’re paying for it because everything’s expensive. I mean, really.
Dewire: The growers themselves are feeling the squeeze, and they say it isn’t coming from tariffs. It’s the cost of fertilizer, which is spiked in recent years, and is still running higher than it was a year ago
Alma Nicotra: Oh, that customer, they told me, why are your prices so high? So, I said, everything is now high: fertilizer, soil, spots, seeds.
Dewire: And for Jim Maryinuk, who sells only what he can cut from his own land that morning, the costs are real. But so is a growing appetite for buying local
Jim Maryinuk: Fertilizer for me has doubled, some has tripled, some has doubled. I’ve had more people coming to the farmstand because of the prices in the grocery stores. They’re paying 5, 6,7,8 dollars for a pound of asparagus and god knows where it came from, but they come out to the farm where they buy it for 6 dollars a pound, and they see me cutting it 10 minutes before they’re purchasing it.
Dewire: That’s the pitch most shoppers are buying as grocery prices continue to climb. The CNY regional market is open Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays for the farmers’ markets. reporting live in Syracuse, Will Dewire, NCC News.
Erb: Local farms may offer lower prices, but growers say their own costs keep climbing. We’ll continue to monitor the impact on both shoppers and farmers.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) – As grocery prices keep climbing across Central New York, more shoppers are turning to the CNY Regional Market for cheaper produce. But the farmers selling it say they are facing rising costs of their own, and the culprit is not what many would expect.
It is not tariffs. It is fertilizer.
At the market on the corner of Park Street and Farmers Market Place on Thursday morning, the same price pressures making headlines were actually drawing people in. For shoppers like Casey Kiskadden, climbing grocery costs have turned an occasional trip into a regular one.
“It’s more of a reaction to how expensive it is,” Kiskadden said. “The grocery store is convenient, and we have the subscription services for delivery, but sometimes when it comes to the money right now, this is just easier.”
Vendors said more shoppers are discovering what they have long known: local can beat the grocery store on both price and freshness, even if convenience often wins out.
Not every grower sees it the same way. Farmer Ben Paine said too many shoppers still default to the grocery store and pay more for the convenience.
“I hate to say it, but people need to go to the grocery store,” Paine said. “They get better variety, and they’re paying for it because everything’s expensive. I mean, really expensive.”
But the bigger story for the growers is what is squeezing them, and they say it is not tariffs. It is the cost of fertilizer, which spiked in recent years and is still running higher than it was a year ago.
Alma Nicotra, co-owner of Nicotra Farms, said customers often ask why prices are so high. “That customer, they told me, why are your prices so high?” Nicotra said. “So I said, everything now is high: fertilizer, soil, spots, seeds.”
For Jim Maryinuk of Maryinuk Farms, who sells asparagus he cuts from his own land in Oswego County, the cost pressures are real, but so is a growing appetite for buying local.
“Fertilizer for me has doubled, some has tripled,” Maryinuk said. “I’ve had more people coming to the farm stand because of the prices in the grocery stores. They’re paying five, six, seven, eight dollars for a pound of asparagus and god knows where it came from, but they come out to the farm where they buy it for six dollars a pound, and they see me cutting it 10 minutes before they’re purchasing it.”
The data support what the vendors described. Fertilizer prices roughly doubled, with some products such as anhydrous ammonia tripling, during a supply shock in 2021 and 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Prices eased afterward but have climbed again, running an estimated 10% to 20% higher than a year ago, according to Texas A&M AgriLife, and the USDA forecasts fertilizer costs per acre will rise about 5% in 2026. Grocery prices, meanwhile, are up roughly 3% over the past year, one of the sharpest increases since 2022.
The result at the regional market is a kind of split screen: shoppers saving money by buying local, and the people who grow that food working to keep their prices down as the cost of farming rises.
The CNY Regional Market is open Tuesdays, Thursdays, and weekends for farmers markets.