Americans Pay Much More Than They Should For Food

[jeffrey]

Before you start spooning up your next bowl of Frosted Flakes, ponder this: driven partly by the demand for ethanol, the price of the corn in your flakes is about 40 percent higher than it was a few years ago; the sugar easily cost you more than double the world price; and your milk is at least 15 percent more expensive than it would be in many other countries.

Americans pay much more than they should for their food. Thanks to a thicket of subsidies and tariffs that support American farmers and tilt the growing field against cheaper foreign producers, we get ripped off twice: first as taxpayers who ante up for roughly $25 billion in agricultural subsidies each year ($4 billion for milk alone in 2006); then as consumers who pay higher prices at the checkout counter because we can't take advantage of low-price imports...

Tell Americans What They're Really Paying for Their Food - Ideas Special Report