Sounds like he is actually saying something I agree with.
I’ve never understood farm subsidies and getting paid NOT to grow something.
Anything with the words gov’t and subsidies in it has got to be bad.
One of the biggest areas of “being paid to NOT grow something” comes about from this simple fact:
1. Farmers own land.
2. Environmentalists, city folks, hunters/anglers and urban planners want to be able to tell farmers how to manage their land - because while these pecksniffs don’t own the land, they think they know better than the farmer what to do with the land.
So we have the CRP - Conservation Reserve Program, where farmers are paid to enroll acres that are deemed “sensitive” (usually because they’re wildlife habitat) into the CRP, whereby the gummint pays the farmer to keep those acres “set aside” and not farmed, hayed or grazed.
Then there are several new programs that have come out since 1996 to pay farmers to do things the non-farmers want done with the land.
These programs aren’t the majority of the money, but they make for the majority of the perception - ie, “farmers being paid to not farm.” The old program(s) that brought about that perception were based on production quotas and “enrolled acres” - that system was gone and done in 1996.