Every time the Agriculture Department tries to guess how high food prices will go this year, it gives consumers another nasty shock. The department started off last fall by predicting a 4½% rise, later raised its estimate to 12%. Last week it confessed that even that figure was too low; it now calculates that food prices for all of 1973 will average a devastating 20% higher than 1972, making this year's rise the steepest since 1947. And that puts the expectation conservatively; if the average for the whole year is that much higher, food prices at the end of...
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