In our example, in order to support the Price Floor the government found it necessary to purchase large quantities of surplus milk. Moreover, the government was not able to sell or give away the surplus milk without undoing the price floor. Thus, not only are these policies costly, they require that large quantities of food be produced that must then be kept out of the hands of consumers.

In order to avoid the problem of excess agricultural products, sometimes farmers are paid to produce no output. This kind of policy is almost as expensive as buying up the surplus, but at least it keeps the government from having to dispose of surplus food.

The fact is, billions of dollars are spent each year in the U.S. to support agricultural prices above the equilibrium level. No matter how it is done, maintaining a market price above its equilibrium price is expensive. The power of market forces means that such agricultural price support polices will remain very costly, and will keep the price of food for the typical US family considerably higher than it would otherwise be.