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> And yet this is exactly what is done for farming: Paying farmers to leave fields fallow in order to maintain supply and thereby pricing. I'm sure there are s

> And yet this is exactly what is done for farming: Paying farmers to leave fields fallow in order to maintain supply and thereby pricing. I'm sure there are some subtleties I'm missing, but this has always struck me as a little odd. why do we subsidize agricultural production and then turn around and also pay farmers not to use fields to stop the price from falling too low? also a price collapse isn't necessarily cataclysmic for someone with a mortgage. as long as they can keep making the monthly payments, nothing immediately changes. it's only a problem if you need to sell or if the prices never recover.

Retric 6y ago
It’s mostly about buying votes cheaply. There are significant incentives to consistently maintain a food surplus, but one you start handing out government subsidies you get the usual corruption. As subsides crash prices it’s cheaper to just pay farmers to do nothing than to pay them to create a crop that’s just going to rot. Basically, you don’t want to pay 1$ to farmers per ton of corn just to lower the price of a ton of corn by 1$. The goal is to hand that dollar to the farmers not the general public.
grawprog 6y ago
>I'm sure there are some subtleties I'm missing, but this has always struck me as a little odd. why do we subsidize agricultural production and then turn around and also pay farmers not to use fields to stop the price from falling too low? Farm fields need to be left fallow every four years or so to replenish the soil https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallow >Fallow is a farming technique in which arable land is left without sowing for one or more vegetative cycles. The goal of fallowing is to allow the land to recover and store organic matter while retaining moisture and disrupting the lifecycles of pathogens by temporarily removing their hosts. Fallow fields also tend to be good habitat for small mammals, which in turn draws in birds of prey and stuff and provides habitat for them. These guys go a step further https://deltafarmland.ca/ https://deltafarmland.ca/ They work with farmers and pay them to actually plant native grasses and nitrogen fixing cover crops for a couple years to allow natural habitat to develop. As far as I remember, those farmers tend to have a couple fields they rotate every 4 years or so. Leaving one fallow with natural grasses while planting the others with crops.

Retric 6y ago

It’s mostly about buying votes cheaply. There are significant incentives to consistently maintain a food surplus, but one you start handing out government subsidies you get the usual corruption. As subsides crash prices it’s cheaper to just pay farmers to do nothing than to pay them to create a crop that’s just going to rot. Basically, you don’t want to pay 1$ to farmers per ton of corn just to lower the price of a ton of corn by 1$. The goal is to hand that dollar to the farmers not the general public.

grawprog 6y ago

>I'm sure there are some subtleties I'm missing, but this has always struck me as a little odd. why do we subsidize agricultural production and then turn around and also pay farmers not to use fields to stop the price from falling too low? Farm fields need to be left fallow every four years or so to replenish the soil https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallow >Fallow is a farming technique in which arable land is left without sowing for one or more vegetative cycles. The goal of fallowing is to allow the land to recover and store organic matter while retaining moisture and disrupting the lifecycles of pathogens by temporarily removing their hosts. Fallow fields also tend to be good habitat for small mammals, which in turn draws in birds of prey and stuff and provides habitat for them. These guys go a step further https://deltafarmland.ca/ https://deltafarmland.ca/ They work with farmers and pay them to actually plant native grasses and nitrogen fixing cover crops for a couple years to allow natural habitat to develop. As far as I remember, those farmers tend to have a couple fields they rotate every 4 years or so. Leaving one fallow with natural grasses while planting the others with crops.