[setter]

This story is total bs and has already been debunked.

I come from a farming background and the govt has never paid farmers to destroy crops.they have paid farmers for not growing crops

[Chad C. Mulligan]

There are people who will believe anything if it’s on social media.

Which is why we are in such a mess.

[digger48]

I’ve worked 50 years draining farmers fields

This never happens

Only way is if they get subsided by the feds for idling the acreage

Farmers grow crops. And they love $7.00+ corn

[21twelve]

Well, FDR did it during the Great Depression. (FDR made the Depression longer and worse because of crap like this):

From the net:

Culling the herd isn’t new to America. In Burton W. Folsom’s book “New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America,” the retired professor of history at Hillsdale College brings to light some of the darker aspects of the New Deal.

During the Great Depression, the cost of livestock and crops were so low that Franklin D. Roosevelt, as a part of his New Deal, introduced the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). This legislation paid farmers to kill millions of hogs and cows and plow under over 10 million acres of cotton to artificially inflate prices. Unfortunately, this occurred as millions of Americans were going hungry.

This tactic was widely scrutinized and criticized. It was difficult for farmers to reconcile, having worked hard to raise animals and cultivate crops to feed their communities and the rest of the country. In the end, Americans had to pay a higher price for goods and the U.S. ended up importing tens of millions of pounds of crops that they were paying farmers not to produce.

[al baby]

so kinda like abortion

[The Duke]

"I come from a farming background and the govt has never paid farmers to destroy crops.they have paid farmers for not growing crops"

And isn't the purpose to preserve the soil, and maybe prevent another Dust Bowl?

[Secret Agent Man]

I know theyhave paid farmers to let fields rest a season so they don’t get overdepleted of minerals.

Isnt it every 7th year, you let a field fallow/rest?

[higgmeister]

This story is total bs and has already been debunked.

I come from a farming background and the govt has never paid farmers to destroy crops. They have paid farmers for not growing crops

So a farmer who has just planted his grain, decides to plow it under and apply for the subsidy on his lower forty acres is never possible.   Your equivocation appears hollow and disingenuous.

Editor’s Note: Robert Frank, who recently guest-blogged for several weeks here at the Business Desk with answers to some of life’s economic ironies, once again answers questions posed by viewers.

Question: Why does the government pay farmers not to grow crops?

Robert Frank: Paying farmers not to grow crops was a substitute for agricultural price support programs designed to ensure that farmers could always sell their crops for enough to support themselves. The price support program meant that farmers had to incur the expense of plowing their fields, fertilizing, irrigating, spraying, and harvesting them, and then selling their crops to the government, which stored them in silos until they either rotted or were consumed by rodents. It was much cheaper just to pay farmers not to grow the crops in the first place.

Of course, paying people not to do work is bound to be politically awkward (think of the old New Yorker cartoon of an accordion player on a subway platform with a sign next to his cup that read, “Will not play Lady of Spain, 25 cents”). So the government described the program as an environmental one rather than an income maintenance scheme. As described to the public, it was compensation to farmers for retiring acreage to reduce fertilizer and pesticide runoff into the nation’s water supply.

Why Does the Govt. Pay Farmers to Not Grow Crops?

[Mr. Lucky]

As a farmer, I gotta tell you this is total BS.