• mommykink@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    During the Great Depression the federal government literally paid farmers to not harvest crops because allowing that much food to be produced would dilute the market and bring down crop prices.

    During the Great Depression.

    A time when people were starving and there were virtually no forms of welfare.

    When millions were thrust into poverty for reasons entirely out of their control.

    The federal government paid farmers to create less food to protect profit margins.

    • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Nowadays they largely pay for the food and give it to to people. We got gallons of eggs at one point from that.

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Farmers have bills to pay, too. If the price of growing food doesn’t cover the cost to make it they’ll go out of business. Then there will be one less farm to grow food. If there’s no farms and we’re totally reliant on imports, that’s a strategic weakness.

      It’s the same reason we prop up carmakers when they go out of business: Manufacturing capacity is a strategic asset just like farmland.

      • Slowy@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Then subsidize the farmers by the amount you were paying them to not harvest the food ? They don’t make any money when they aren’t selling it at all either, without this intervention…

    • randon31415@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Are you sure you aren’t thinking of crop rotation? Have 4 fields, have one fallow every 4 years to recharge the soil. Keep farming without doing so causes the topsoil to blow and that caused the great dustbowl which preceded the great depression.

        • MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net
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          3 months ago

          It boggles my mind how little people are aware of this kind of practice. The Who even wrote a “joke” song about it in the 70s:

          https://youtu.be/_VkVn0A7E6o

          Well, I farmed for a year and grew a crop of corn 
          That stretched as far as the eye can see 
          That’s a whole lot of cornflakes 
          Near enough to feed New York till 1973

          Cultivation is my station and the nation 
          Buys my corn from me immediately 
          And holding sixty thousand bucks, I watch as dumper trucks 
          Tip New York’s corn flakes in the sea

          ~~

          Well, my pick and spade are rusty
          Because I’m paid on trust 
          To leave my square of cornfield bare

        • randon31415@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Probably to keep from ripping up the top soil during the harvest. Kind of counterintuitive to use less farmland and to produce less when the price is high, but same thing works with oil fields - you get more the slower you pump.

            • randon31415@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Oh, I thought you were talking about not harvesting the corn once it was ready.

              federal government literally paid farmers to not harvest crops

              If it was already harvested and then left to rot, that was market manipulation of some sort. Maybe Grangers and breaking the rail monopolies? Though I think they did the whole “left harvested food to rot” bit in the late 1800s, not early 1900s