Consumer Food Costs: Measuring the Food Dollar

This book examines the increases in marketing costs of U.S.-produced food commodities which have outpaced increases in the payments farmers have received for these commodities over the past 40 years. Economic theory provides several market structures that could explain this trend. A persistent increase in the U.S. food marketing bill over an extended period suggests that something more fundamental may also be behind the trend for food marketing costs to rise faster than farmers’ proceeds, such as changes in both the structure of the food marketing system and in the socio-economic characteristics of food consumers.