Berry Puzzle

I found your article “Strawberry Fields Not Forever” (May 18) very enlightening.

I came up with some interesting conclusions of my own from the graphs in the article by comparing the bumper strawberry crop of 1986 with the poor strawberry crop of 1988. The farmer, for his efforts, earned an average of $705.25 per acre for his 1986 bumper crop. But he was only able to earn an average of $650.56 per acre for his poorer crop in 1988.

So, the farmer surprisingly had an 8% decline in earnings per acre, instead of a comparable increase in earnings established by supply and demand.

One has to conclude that the exceptionally high retail prices of strawberries in 1988 were being artificially kept high by the service side of the food industry. One has to ask, “Are the food prices established by the free market system? Or are they established by taking advantage of the farmer and by whatever the market will bear?”

LOUIS MALAKOFF

Huntington Beach