On the other hand, there's a lot of great farmland that is constantly being developed for housing and retail purposes. I see this all the time in Illinois as t

On the other hand, there's a lot of great farmland that is constantly being developed for housing and retail purposes. I see this all the time in Illinois as the suburbs constantly spread out into areas that used to be farms. As far as I know, it is far from trivial to go back to farming once that sort of development has taken place. So while subsidies are not the best of solutions, I'm not entirely convinced that it is a good thing to make it even more profitable to develop farmland.