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Comment by greenpizza13 | Hacker News Reader

You're probably being facetious, but I have heard some version of this argument before. It's akin to saying "give us what we want or we'll hold the country hostage."

In reality, free markets being a thing, this wouldn't happen. We can import from other countries and they need to sell their goods to live.

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Do you want to eat unregulated Chinese mystery meat? Not that I agree with the sentiment of 'holding the urban areas hostage' but the US and the world need the agricultural production of the central US

California actually provides most of the produce (vegetables fruits and nuts) for the nation. The midwestern corn / soy / beef states are focused on producing bulk commodities for export to other countries.

Yes, you are correct. My comment implied that a healthy population needs both. The agriculture crops are equally necessary for calories and protein

More hyperbolic than facetious. It can’t be a good thing to disenfranchise the holders of your strategic resources en masse, and farmland was the easiest to point at.

You’re right that it’s extremely unlikely to get so bad that they get forcibly nationalized. However, my understanding is that market conditions are pretty bad for farmers right now, and have been for years. Any change that makes things worse for them will likely drive some to other lines of work and reduce overall production, driving food prices up.

This particular effect is probably extremely small in practice, but I felt the need to remind HN that not all value is produced in cities.

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