&gt;farm subsidies<p>The phrase &#x27;Farm subsidies&#x27; doesn&#x27;t quite do justice to what was put into place. The phrase sounds like just giving farmers money to grow stuff, which people might think is inefficient but probably not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. After all, these sorts of subsidies <i>should</i> increase supply and lower prices.<p>The reality is there&#x27;s a tangled web of price controls, subsidies, import quotas, government purchases, etc. that in many cases have resulted in <i>higher</i> food prices, not <i>lower</i> food prices as simple subsidies might imply.<p>Take sugar, for instance. We have import quotas and tariffs on sugar resulting in higher sugar prices in the US than in the rest of the world despite having sugar growing regions in Mexico or the Caribbean on our doorstep. This is one of the reasons that we use high fructose corn syrup in everything instead of sugar. If we didn&#x27;t have these laws, we&#x27;d have cheaper, more abundant sugar and probably less HFCS infused food.