OCR Text |
Show Farm costs soar Per acre production costs are projected to climb 24 percent from 1979 for corn, 23 percent for wheat and 18 percent for cotton. Retail food prices are expected ex-pected to rise sharply in the second half of. 1980, led by increases for beef, pork and poultry. Higher marketing costs will again be an important im-portant factor in third quarter quar-ter retail food price rises; the farm value of foods is expected to rise substantially substan-tially from the extremely low second quarter levels and will likely contribute ' m ore to the food price rise than marketingcost increases. increas-es. Consumers are expected to spend $21 billion more in food stores and eating places than in 1979. More than 95 percent of this increase in-crease will be caused by a larger marketing bill, reflecting re-flecting higher costs for labor, la-bor, packaging, transportation, transporta-tion, and energy. |