Food Subsidies Cost Billions, OECD Study Says.

Farm subsidies and import barriers cost the world’s riches nations $72 billion a year in list income, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international economic research group, said in a report.

Agricultural policies waste resources by overstimulating output in farming and food processing and pushing up land and consumer food prices, the study said.

It concludes that eliminating all farm supports in the 17 large nations reviewed in the study would boost income in OECD household by almost 1%.

The study focuses on agricultural policies in Australia, Canada, the European Community, Japan, New Zealand and the United States, the dominate nations in the 24-member OECD.

Although eliminating farm supports would hurt farming in North America, Japan and the European Community, it would reduce food prices by 1.6%, knock land prices down by 40% and boost the output of non-food countries by 1.1%.