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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

"They want surplus capacity. They prefer resiliency to efficiency when it comes to food crops (including fodder). If something goes wrong, they want the ability to put additional fields into play quickly."

Source?

This is not the reason I'm aware of. I believe it's all about price control on the supply side, not capacity. Just look at that old SCOTUS ruling that forbid individuals from growing more more a specific amount a wheat. They used the interstate commerce clause to say that the secondary affects of growing your own wheat jeopardizes the wheat industry due to the inability to control prices.

For example, there are current talks about a food crisis due to the war in Ukraine. Yet the USDA has not authorized the land enrolled in conservation programs to be utilized. Also, that land tends to be the lower producing land. Farmers get paid the same for the enrolled land, so they enroll the lower producing acres.

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> I believe it's all about price control on the supply side, not capacity.

That doesn't contradict GP's point. Keeping prices from dropping too low reduces incentives for farmers to exit the business, thereby maintaining high capacity for when it's needed.

"thereby maintaining high capacity for when it's needed."

How so? We're talking about acres not farmers. Small farms can go under and larger farms will take over working the land. We saw that in the 80s. The land being conserved is generally lower capacity anyways (they aren't going enroll the high producing acres).

So it might not contradict in theory, but the evidence from the current situation seems to support that the capacity is not valued and only the price control reason is. Is there any support for the idea that it's about having reserve capacity to utilize? Has it ever been utilized?

If farmers can't profitably farm they sell the land off to other interests or go bankrupt. People are not choosing to go into farming....at all. thus a bankrupt farm will sit fallow, be bought by some golf course development, or be turned into a "nature preserve", reducing capacity. The dots are not hard to connect.

The dots connect differently than you suggest. Sure, maybe in a suburban area the farms turn to golf courses. Many small farms are scooped up by larger farms. Looks like almost 10% reduction in number of farms since '86 and the size of the large farms have increased.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/big-farms-are-getting-b...

This is obviously false. If nobody at all had gone into farming in the last 40 years, there would be no farmers left. Let me introduce you to my neighbors, the farmers. Hint: they don't live in San Francisco. Drive through Central Valley and guess how many 20-40 year old farmers are involved in all that food production.

There are much fewer farmers than there used to be. But simple math tells you that more food consumption divided by fewer farmers provides a huge opportunity for more profit per farmer. If you are politically- and business-savvy enough you can become enormously wealthy.

Protection from disruptions by political and/or environmental factors are primary goals of agriculture policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_policy#Objectives...

That's in general. Price controls are an agricultural policy too. Do you have something that shows which general policies apply to which specific ones?

As an example, the Conservation Reserve Program is pretty clear about its purpose.

> CRP protects more than 20 millions of acres of American topsoil from erosion and is designed to safeguard the nation’s natural resources

https://www.fsa.usda.gov/Assets/USDA-FSA-Public/usdafiles/Fa...

That's not the same as what you were claiming.

I don’t see how “Protecting topsoil from erosion” is not obviously in direct support to the “environmental factors” claim above.

The claim/policy being discussed is about preserved land being set aside for the purpose of using it when additional capacity is needed. So far there is no evidence that is the purpose, since it has never been unenrolled or utilized, even as there is talk about food crisis related to the war in Ukraine. If anything, the information you've posted seems to support my position that the policy is not about utilizing that additional capacity, but about other goals.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/why-does-the-govt-pay-f...

The US Department of Agriculture doesn’t have natural resources conservation programs for shits and giggles. They do it to conserve natural resources for agriculture, as the words plainly suggest.

https://www.usda.gov/our-agency/about-usda/mission-areas

> Farm Production and Conservation (FPAC) is the Department’s focal point for the Nation’s farmers and ranchers and other stewards of private agricultural lands and non-industrial private forest lands. FPAC agencies implement programs designed to mitigate the significant risks of farming through crop insurance, conservation programs …

> The mission of Natural Resources and Environment is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the Nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.

> So far there is no evidence that is the purpose, since it has never been unenrolled or utilized, even as there is talk about food crisis related to the war in Ukraine.

The US Department of Agriculture protects the interests of agriculture in the US, not the Middle East and North Africa.

The evidence that it is used for agriculture conservation is the fact that it is called agriculture conservation.

I think you need to read back for the context. You're clearly talking about a separate thing from what was being discussed.

To put it quite plainly, can you point to a time when lands were unenrolled from conservation programs in order to increase food production capacity?

We haven’t had a need to use it. Since these policies have been implemented we’ve had no dust bowls, no world wars, no famine.

There is the expected food crisis from the war in Ukraine. Still they are not allowing early unenrollment. US farmer are asking for unenrollment so they can grow crops that can be exported and reduce the expected market price increase due to lack of supply.

The USDA conserves those resources to protect American food security, not Egypt's and Lebanon's.

According to you it protects US agricultural interests. Increasing profit and keeping food prices reasonable in the US fit that description. The price control does affect US food security when such a large number already live in food insecure households.

> According to you it protects US agricultural interests.

Does it do something else? I have no clue what you're insinuating.

The prices of food are, in fact, an important part of agriculture policy. This is in conjunction with, not in lieu of, conservation policies.

US agriculture policy has done a pretty good job at this. The US has been, for a while, the country with the #1 lowest percentage of consumer expenditure on food.

In theory I think the capital needed to farm might be the real issue; it needs to be maintained even if it is unprofitable to do so in a given year.

I'm in two minds. We can't afford for anything to go wrong with food security, so it might make sense to do something otherwise wildly stupid if it contributes to people not starving to death. But I question whether any given policy is likely to help or if it is a handout for nothing.

But to resolve that specific policies, places & examples are needed. Debating theory isn't enough.

The real issue is that most primary sector industries can't compete internationally due to the cost of living difference. The capital expense and living expense is high, while the profits are low since other countries can produce the product more cheaply. We subsidize crop production. Without these subsidies our products wouldn't even be close to competing on the international marketplace. It could be interesting to what happens with subsidies removed, but I'm guessing the affect would be large and negative.

In the context of the novel, the reasoning doesn't matter much - either way, an individual is led to act in an unnatural way to appease the institution.

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