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The rural/urban :: Republican/Democrat split combined with our less than representative democracy means the farm lobby is pretty damn powerful. It'll be real ha

by sulam 3y ago

The rural/urban :: Republican/Democrat split combined with our less than representative democracy means the farm lobby is pretty damn powerful. It'll be real hard to lower subsidies, more likely would be to subsidize different activities. Paying farmers to not farm is pretty common now, but God forbid someone be on welfare without looking for a job.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
> Paying farmers to not farm is pretty common now How so??
- bombcar 3y ago
  To prevent farm price collapses, the government tries to regulate the amount of certain products that are made. For example, if the USA can eat one million pounds of soybeans a year, and this year less than one million were grown, the price will skyrocket. So next year all the farmers grow soybeans, because it was a huge money maker, and three million pounds is the result - but that floods the market and the price of soybeans drops to nothing, and all the farmers go bankrupt. To prevent that, the government tries to convince farmers NOT to grow whatever crop they think there will be too much of, and pays them to fallow fields. It's memed as "paid not to farm" but it's much more complicated than that, and it's not a guaranteed money-maker (seen by the absolute demise of the small farm over the last 50 years).
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    I'm assuming you'd have had to at least plant the crop to get paid to not harvest it, right? Why would we do that instead of buy the soybeans at market rates and then send them to countries as aid?
    - bombcar 3y ago
      No, you just have to fallow the land (plant nothing) - as far as I know. The latter is done for some products in various ways but that's a more fine-grained solution (which destroys poor countries agriculture entirely, which is another horror story). Government Cheese™ literally comes from the government buying up milk and having to do SOMETHING with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese

by sulam 3y ago

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

> Paying farmers to not farm is pretty common now How so??

bombcar 3y ago
To prevent farm price collapses, the government tries to regulate the amount of certain products that are made. For example, if the USA can eat one million pounds of soybeans a year, and this year less than one million were grown, the price will skyrocket. So next year all the farmers grow soybeans, because it was a huge money maker, and three million pounds is the result - but that floods the market and the price of soybeans drops to nothing, and all the farmers go bankrupt. To prevent that, the government tries to convince farmers NOT to grow whatever crop they think there will be too much of, and pays them to fallow fields. It's memed as "paid not to farm" but it's much more complicated than that, and it's not a guaranteed money-maker (seen by the absolute demise of the small farm over the last 50 years).
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  I'm assuming you'd have had to at least plant the crop to get paid to not harvest it, right? Why would we do that instead of buy the soybeans at market rates and then send them to countries as aid?
  - bombcar 3y ago
    No, you just have to fallow the land (plant nothing) - as far as I know. The latter is done for some products in various ways but that's a more fine-grained solution (which destroys poor countries agriculture entirely, which is another horror story). Government Cheese™ literally comes from the government buying up milk and having to do SOMETHING with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese