Again, to clarify: I'm not talking about conventional factory farming vs. organic/local farming; I'm not referring to the economies of scale realized by industr

Again, to clarify: I'm not talking about conventional factory farming vs. organic/local farming; I'm not referring to the economies of scale realized by industrialized farming practices. I'm talking about massive, direct economic subsidies for the kinds of crops that tend to go into prepared foods vs. the comparative absence of massive, direct economic subsidies for the kinds of crops that tend to be the ingredients of home cooked meals. (The actual ingredients of home-cooked meals vs. their prepared equivalents are rarely even remotely similar.) I hope what this has to do with the cost of cooking ingredients vs. eating prepared food is self-evident.