[PLOlover]

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ut I think a portion of the subsidies actually go towards paying farmers to not put any crops on their land (this might have been his point of the subsidies not causing overproduction) because there are already enough of those crops. It'

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well the thing about farming is that the land must be maintained. so when they get paid not to plant say corn or wheat, they plant some cheap crop and just plow it under so that the next year it is still ready for corn or wheat.

basically the government is paying for a positive externality that market forces wouldn't.