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As Americans sit down at their Thanksgiving tables, many of the items in front of them will be more expensive than they were last year. Pies in particular. And climate change is a contributing factor.

Inflation is hitting every sector of the economy, and food products are not immune. But many of the ingredients that go into holiday pies have been hit by floods, fires and drought, causing shortages and pushing prices higher.

For example, the crust. Wheat prices are now at the highest level since 2012 and are up over 10% in just the past month. Severe drought in the U.S. west and northern plains caused what the U.S. Department of Agriculture is estimating will be the worst wheat production in nearly two decades.

Those higher costs for wheat, as well as alfalfa, make feed costs higher, causing dairy prices to rise. Cows also produce less milk during droughts.

Then there’s the pie filling.

“The Pacific Northwest had a terrible year between the heat and the drought. We saw a lot of things that they are good at, like cherries and apples, see a pretty major hit to their production from where they typically are,” said Michael Swanson, agriculture economist at Wells Fargo.

Pumpkins are also pricier, due to heavy rains in the midwest that caused a pumpkin shortage. The average price of a pumpkin was 15% higher this fall.

Even honey. Wildfires in the West left honeybees with little to eat. States like California, Colorado, Montana and Utah have lost nearly half their honeybee colonies in the past two years, due to disease, starvation and unusual weather.

Imports are also affected. Prices for vanilla from Madagascar and chocolate from Brazil are also rising due to severe weather and flooding.

“Now we worry about freezes in Brazil even more than we did before, or floods in China. And so we can’t run and hide anymore from global severe weather events because they’re all part of the food chain,” said Swanson.

At The Pie Shop in Washington, D.C., Thanksgiving orders are all filled and the pies are piling up, but so are the costs.

“I would say there are a number of ingredients that on some weeks are almost double what they were last year,” said Sandra Basanti, who has owned the Shop with her husband for 12 years.

Basanti tries to source ingredients locally to keep costs down, but large items like flour, sugar and eggs need to be bought from bulk distributors. She also makes savory pies that require beef, and the cost of that is rising as well.

All of it is hitting her small business especially hard.

“Usually Thanksgiving is when we’re able to make a little extra money to cushion us for the slow winter. However, this year, I’m not so sure that we will really even be profitable,” she said.

Over 12 years Basanti said she has raised her prices maybe 10%, but that is not enough to make up for the recent hike in her production costs. She doesn’t want to raise prices now, she said, because, “There’s only so much you can really charge for a pie.”

Federal Reserve officials at their meeting earlier this month expressed concern about inflation and said they would be willing to raise interest rates if prices keep rising.

The committee that sets interest rates for the Fed on Wednesday released the minutes from the November session where it first signaled that it could be dialing back all the economic help it’s been providing during the pandemic.

The meeting summary indicates a lively discussion about inflation, with members stressing the willingness to act if conditions continue to heat up.

“Various participants noted that the Committee should be prepared to adjust the pace of asset purchases and raise the target range for the federal funds rate sooner than participants currently anticipated if inflation continued to run higher than levels consistent with the Committee’s objectives,” the minutes stated.

Officials stressed a “patient” approach regarding incoming data, which has shown inflation running at its highest pace in more than 30, the years.

But they also said they would “not hesitate to take appropriate actions to address inflation pressures that posed risks to its longer-run price stability and employment objectives.”

Following the two-day session that concluded Nov. 3, the Federal Open Market Committee indicated it will begin cutting back on the monthly bond-buying program that had seen it purchasing at least $120 billion in Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities.

The goal of the program was to keep money flowing in those markets while maintaining broader interest rates at low levels to boost economic activity.

In its post-meeting statement, the FOMC said “substantial further progress” in the economy would allow a $15 billion a month reduction in purchases — $10 billion in Treasurys and $5 billion in MBS. The statement said that schedule would be maintained through at least December and probably continue going forward until the program wound down – likely by late spring or early summer 2022.

The minutes noted that some FOMC members wanted an even faster pace to give the Fed leeway to raise rates sooner.

“Some participants suggested that reducing the pace of net asset purchases by more than $15 billion each month could be warranted so that the Committee would be in a better position to make adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate, particularly in light of inflation pressures,” the minutes said.

That’s important because inflation has gotten even hotter since the November meeting. In previous cycles, the Fed has raised interest rates to cool the economy, but officials have said they are willing to allow inflation to run hotter than normal to let the employment picture improve.

Markets, though, are anticipating a more aggressive Fed.

Traders in contracts that bet on the future of short-term rates are indicating the Fed will raise its benchmark rate three times in 2022 in25 basis point intervals, though current official projections are for no more than one hike next year. However, those markets are volatile and can change quickly depending on the signals the Fed sends.

FOMC members expressed concern at the meeting that the continued high inflation readings could influence public perception and “expectations were becoming less well anchored” to the Fed’s 2% longer-run target.

After lying dormant for years, inflation is once again chipping away at American wallets, and it has become a chief concern for the White House.

In recent months, the Biden administration ramped up its efforts to remedy the supply-chain interruptions economists blame for hot inflation. And President Joe Biden has been pushing his economic agenda as a remedy for inflation worries.

But ask investors, economists and the American people for their thoughts on inflation, and no one sees inflation cooling off anytime soon. That means everyone from the president to the everyday voter will likely need patience to get through this.

“I don’t think you want to promise people inflation is going away,” said Jason Furman, an economist and former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration.

“I think the hardest thing to communicate is that not every problem has a solution. Some of what needs to be done to heal our economy is to be patient,” he continued. “That’s a really hard a message for any president to deliver. They have to be seen as doing things.”

Rising food and gas prices are weighing on Americans living on fixed or modest incomes. Retail grocery prices rose 1% in October, laundry and dry-cleaning costs are up 6.9% from a year ago, and in some parts of California gasoline is being sold north of $6 a gallon. General Mills notified retailers that it plans to soon hike prices on dozens of its brands, including Cheerios, Wheaties and Annie’s, according to a report published Tuesday.

In turn, the inflation messaging coming out of the White House has focused a great deal on two big, Biden-backed bills. One of the president’s favorite counters to inflation worries is to point out that many economists say his $1.75 trillion Build Back Better bill and a separate $1 trillion infrastructure plan will make businesses and workers more productive and ease inflation pressures over the long term.

Yet while better roads, access to child care and weatherization may help reduce costs years in the future, Democrats face critical midterm elections in less than 12 months.

Inflation appeared to be a hurdle for Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin in Virginia’s recent gubernatorial election.

Political strategists viewed that election as a gauge of voter attitude toward the current direction of policy with Democrats in control of the White House and Congress. The high-profile Democratic defeat in an increasingly blue Virginia is thought to have sparked compromise between party centrists and progressives on the infrastructure and anti-poverty and climate bills.

Americans’ angst about the economy, as measured by the percentage of those surveyed who mention any economic issue as the top problem facing the U.S., reached a pandemic-era high according to polling firm Gallup. (The survey polled a random sampling of 815 adults, and it had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.)

Twenty-six percent of Americans now cite an economic concern as the nation’s top problem, while 7% say inflation, specifically, is their chief anxiety. In September, just 1% of Americans named inflation as their top worry, Gallup said. It has been more than 20 years since inflation was named as the most important problem by at least 7% of Americans.

“Moms and dads are worried, asking, ‘Will there be enough food we can afford to buy for the holidays? Will we be able to get Christmas presents to the kids on time?'” Biden said in a speech on Tuesday.

To help ease fuel costs during the holiday season, Biden announced that the U.S. and some of its allies will tap their national strategic petroleum reserves.

“The fact is we’ve faced even worst spikes before just in the last decade,” Biden said of rising gas prices. “But it doesn’t mean we should just stand by idly and wait for prices to drop on their own.”

While the Biden administration said it would put 50 million barrels of oil from government stockpiles onto global markets in the coming weeks, some analysts warned the action likely amounts at best to an attempt to pacify consumers.

Tapping the nation’s oil reserves will have a limited impact on fuel costs since “nearly 40% of the 50MM bbl release was already planned for 2022 as well as the fact that much of the oil will simply go into commercial stockpiles,” wrote Tom Essaye, founder of Sevens Report, a markets research firm.

That oil will eventually be repurchased “and later returned to the SPR, meaning the move is largely symbolic and not going to have a major impact on the actual physical markets,” he added.

Furman, who teaches economics at Harvard University, agreed. He said that drawing on the SPR falls into the “no-stone-left-unturned” category for a White House worried about the political impact of rising prices.

The current inflation, he said, is a function of broad shifts in aggregate demand and aggregate supply — beyond the influence of a one-time appeal to the SPR or any other quick fix.

A pesky characteristic of inflation is that today’s price increases are a product of what people think prices will be tomorrow. In other words, inflation expectations can, by themselves, cause inflation.

According to New York Federal Reserve Bank’s most-recent consumer survey, median inflation expectations in October increased to 5.7% for the coming year, the highest level ever recorded since the series began in 2013.

A measure of investors’ expectation for inflation over the next five years has spiked in recent months.

The difference between the yields on five-year Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS, and the corresponding Treasury notes hit 3.17 on Wednesday, its highest level since at least 2003. That effectively means that investors think inflation will average about 3% over the next five years.

The recent uptick in market-based inflation expectations drew the attention of Federal Reserve officials during their November policy meeting. Their meeting minutes, released Wednesday, showed that some central bankers considered the jump as evidence that rising inflation forecasts are starting to go mainstream.

“A couple of participants pointed to increases in survey- and market-based indicators of expected inflation—including the notable rise in the five-year TIPS-based measure of inflation compensation—as possible signs that inflation expectations were becoming less well anchored,” the Fed minutes read.

“I’ve been teaching my students the model that would have helped them predict inflation this year. And that model is that, if you’re way short in demand, then extra demand can help,” he said.

“But if you try to push it too far, you run into a supply constraint,” he continued. “You’ll end up with higher prices rather than higher quantities.”