Every time an American bites into an ice cream cone, candy bar, or cookie, spoons sugar into a bowl of cereal, or tosses a five-pound bag of the stuff into a shopping cart, a very small group of sugar farmers collects propped-up profits, thanks to a U.S. government price-support program.

In fact, over a year's time, U.S. consumers pay $1.4 billion more than they would without the government program -- some $560 million of which goes directly to sugar producers,1 according to the General Accounting Office. (That's a conservative estimate: a 1988 Department of Commerce study put the cost to consumers at an average of $3.7 billion a year.) Thirty-three farms in Florida and Hawaii receive more than a million dollars in benefits apiece yearly, one-third of the benefits of the entire federal sugar program. Four sugar cane companies in Florida receive more than $20 million apiece in benefits from the sugar program every year.