As part of a Nebraska farm family and as a volunteer surveyor of typical food purchases at Thanksgiving, Erma McGill knows some good news.

It's about the first decline in national average Thanksgiving prices in five years.

As executive director of the Food Bank of Lincoln, Scott Young knows a more sobering side of the holiday food story.

The federal government's Food Insecurity Index is at its highest level since monitoring began in 1995.

In challenging economic times, it's often hard to tell if things are getting better or worse, if they're more in reach or out of reach.

McGill of Waverly is proud to be part of an annual survey conducted by the Nebraska Farm Bureau Federation in conjunction with a national update from the American Farm Bureau.

"It lets people know that they should thank farmers of all kinds for the food they have, because prices have gone down for Thanksgiving dinner. And we need to be thankful for that."

One reason prices are down is because of an abundance of milk, turkeys and other food.

And even as McGill was doing her surveying work, the state's farmers were harvesting bumper crops of corn and soybeans.

But in the midst of plenty, there is plenty of need, Young said.

"We have so many more people calling, saying ‘I've never done this before, but how can I get some food?'

"So," he said, "it's more people falling off a middle-class cliff into a situation they've not been in recently."

For those lucky enough to have job security, the latest food numbers add up in a reassuring way.

The average cost of a feast for 10, according to the Farm Bureau nationally, is $42.91, down $1.70 from last Thanksgiving. It's the first drop since 2004.

At $2.86 a gallon, milk is down 92 cents from 2008. A 16-pound turkey is 44 cents cheaper.

Across the board, said McGill, food prices are down, "not drastically, but that's a plus."

Still, even though she's closely aligned with food production, she's not oblivious to the uncertainties that go with consumption or the time demands that go with food preparation.

"I think the economy has a great bearing on the price of food and how people react to it," she said, "because they don't have as much money.

"They need to be better shoppers," she added, "and not buy as much processed food -- which a lot of people do, because a lot of people, both husband and wife, are working."

Young and the Food Bank, meanwhile, are feeling the effects of situations in which husbands and wives have lost jobs and are either looking for jobs or working at lower wages.

"We're trying to offset increased need," he said of a service area that includes Lincoln and 16 Southeast Nebraska counties.

"I would say we've distributed around 6 million pounds of food this year. And I believe, if we had 8 million or 10 million pounds, we could distribute it.

"So put it all together and you've got falling short. We're doing our best to be our best when our best is needed."

Young and his staff members appreciate all the businesses that donate to the Food Bank and the farmers that are typically farther back in the supply line.

"In October, we distributed 68 pounds of food per minute. And for every 68 that we had going out, 68 were coming in. That's really quite a bit."

In the bigger picture, "what we do foodwise in America really is a miracle."

But often, despite what the broad economic indicators say, it almost seems to take a miracle to keep up with the need and with what's happening inside the city limits -- to single mothers, to elderly people on fixed incomes, to two-income households that have become one-income households.

"Families are displaced or cut back or furloughed," he said. "It doesn't really matter what Ford Motor Company is doing unless you work for Ford Motor Company."

Reach Art Hovey at 473-7223 or ahovey@journalstar.com.