If you thought you were paying fair prices for chicken at the supermarket, think again

In the vast and complicated U.S. economy, it is rare for an individual to exert much control over the price of a major commodity. But then there is Arty G. Schronce and the price of chicken. As director of a bulletin from the Georgia Department of Agriculture, Schronce makes a weekly calculation that gives supermarkets around the country the going rate for a pound of chicken. The price average from Schronce directly affects what big retailers such as Walmart and Safeway pay for chicken — it’s often built into supermarket purchasing contracts — and that price is then passed along to shoppers. It has, in other words, affected billions of dollars in purchases. But has it been accurate? Recently, this influential estimate has drawn questions about whether it artificially inflated U.S. chicken prices and elicited scrutiny from the U.S. Agriculture Department. Now it turns out that even Schronce has harbored serious doubts about its accuracy.   Over the past two years, the price estimate, known within the industry as the “Georgia Dock,” has drifted significantly upward from other chicken price averages, rising about 20 percent or more out of line with a separate but lesser known index maintained by the USDA. A deviation in supermarket chicken prices of that magnitude would have cost U.S. grocery shoppers billions of dollars in recent years.  Food price estimates such as the Georgia Dock affect the price of many perishable products — such as fruits, vegetables, nuts and livestock — because producers rely on them to set the terms of long-term contracts. Many of the price measures, used for decades, are products of long tradition.