Price Spreads Between Farmers and Consumers for Food Products, 1913-44

Excerpts from the report: Material presented in this publication represents, for the most part, completely new series relating to charges for marketing farm food products. They show retail cost per unit of farm food products, farm value of equivalent produce, the price spread or marketing margin, an estimate of marketing charges, and the farmer's share of the retail cost. Some of the material has been revised only slightly, but the bulk of the data represents substantial revision or series not heretofore available. Every effort was made to derive series of farm-retail price spreads and marketing charges for food products that would be thoroughly representative of that part of sales by farmers of food products which finds its way into domestic consumption by the civilian population. This coverage is intended to include all farm food products that are both sold by farmers and purchased by consumers—that is, all farm products which move through the marketing system into domestic human consumption. Important categories of total food consumption excluded by this definition are foods consumed in households of producers and foods of non-farm origin. The latter class includes quantities of foods which are farm products but which do not originate on farms of producers in the continental United States