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  The Society for Consumer Advocates and Mavens

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U.S. FARM PRICE SUPPORTS

The U.S. government subsidizes the food industry including sugar, vegetables and other farm produced commodities. However, this actually raises the prices consumers have to pay for many of the food products that line grocery store shelves!

This practice adds around 60 cents to every bag of sugar sold just to keep Amercian sugar producers financially well off and the list of governmental farm price supports or free taxpayer dollars for other farm produce and products seems to go on and on!

Government subsidies help artificially "prop up" industries from everything like cotton to peanut farming just so American farmers can compete in worldwide markets even though it forces American consumers to pay way more than anyone else in the world for farm products grown right here at home in the USA!

Many peanut farmers have been getting subsidies from the government since 1940 to control peanut production which actually drives up the cost Americans pay for peanut butter by around 30 cents per jar, but is this necesssary?

Peanut farmers who do not qualify for government subsidies must sell their peanuts overseas at one half of the going price in the U.S., meaning peanut butter consumers in the U.S. pay "through the nose" while foreign peanut butter consumers pay lower prices. Apparently, U.S. legislators feel American consumers can afford to pay more!

Essentially, it is the "good 'ole boy" network of legislators at work here, and farmers as well, who all team up together to continue "milking" taxpayers for every dime they can get away with for as long as they can get away with it.

SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: C-SPAN TV NEWS 2/1/96

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