[harshreality]

Your sarcasm aside, there isn't a free market for food. There's tons of intervention.

There's intervention on the supply side, with direct financial subsidies for particular products. There are indirect subsidies like those Snake River dams, which allow farmers in Idaho to cheaply float their crops down to the coast, and which are helping to destroy the salmon population. There are government advice programs like the USDA old "food pyramid" which is pretty much wrong, but shifted demand for foods for decades.

And, of course, there's intervention on the demand side, with food stamps. Essentially, socialized food but only for people who nominally can't afford it.

[asdff]

Sounds like the government is already shouldering most of the cost, might as well go full monte.