the aforementioned potato cabal (it really exists. Theres a fun Half-as-interesting video on how it affects the price of fries)

Farmers do love a good cabal. Here in Canada there’s literally a state agency that does all the buying and selling of dairy products. Drives the Americans crazy.

Insane chip profit margins, because of the consumers’ willingness to pay. Consider a meal containing meat. Sure the manufacturer is making a profit, but can you imagine how much more profit they would be making by selling you a meal with the same amount of calories, but made of potatoes or corn? The consumer is willing to pay, say, $10 for a simple meal containing some meat, but what about half a meal? Maybe $3-5? Well, here come potato chips. They act like they’re half a meal, but they’re actually just cheap oil and a spud. The consumer will still pay more for it, so the companies can charge that much and make a huge profit from the willingness to pay of their dupes.

I mean, you can go and look at how much money they (Utz for example) end up making. It’s not different from the next publicly traded corporation, so there’s got to be expenses somewhere in there.