this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
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Part of the background is that the government wants to keep farmers "on hand" even when demand isn't there, for national security reasons.
Essentially they want to be able to get more crops out of all farmers in a bad year, rather than rely on only a fewer number of farmers in a good year.
There are many greed/corruption/waste issues with this system, but all nations have a strong interest in keeping their breadbasket staffed up for hypothetical bad times
Yup, it’s a subsidy that I think generally makes sense, except I don’t think the plan was for everyone to pour so much resources into corn.
Probably around the point we got to: “can we use mashed up corn as fuel and plastic” is when we should’ve tried incentivizing a greater diversity of crops 😅
I've heard the fuel and plastic thing is again a subsidized endpoint for corn to keep the conveyor belt flowing.