People buy tap water in plastic bottles at a ballgame for $5+.
I do not conclude from those facts that "that means or appears to mean is that the cost of food goods is now driven by cost of production".
People are willing to pay for convenience and comfort. A bag of chips, a cup of Starbucks, or a bottle of cold water at a ballgame represents comfort and convenience.
There is no subsidies for making chips, and it is "a treat" so there is not all that much reason to make it cheap aside from competition
Except for the subsidies for growing the potato.
There's a store near me that has had a particular $5 chip brand on sale for $2 for well over a year. For cereal, I just go to the cereal aisle and take my pick from the substantial range of cereals that are 50% off at any given time. You're only paying full price if you're picky and insist on one specific item, which to be fair maybe a lot of people are like that.
I'm sure the sales are loss leaders to get people in the store, but I have to wonder if the people who pay $5 are to some extent subsidizing the people who buy them for $2. Most other categories of goods don't seem to go on sale with such frequency or with such deep discounts.
There are also lots of energy costs involved in deep frying (both the oil and the heat), special packaging to keep the chips from going stale, etc.
What that means or appears to mean is that the cost of food goods is now driven by cost of production. And we may be underestimating that cost. Perhaps most cost of the potato cost is in the gas, fertilizer, equipment that go into growing the potato.
My question is, of the $5.00 for a bag of potato chips, where does that money go? Cui bono?