Being paid to not plant has been a govt program in one form of another since the great depression as a way to keep prices up and soil conservation. Has nothing to do with current claim.
https://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/conservation-programs/conservation-reserve-program/
However, it also fails for the same reason all government programs/systems like this fail.
***They ultimately cannot predict demand.***
They can force the supply side at times... but it's the demand where they get it horribly wrong. By the way, I hear they are having sales at your local grocery and pharmacy for Covid test kits. I see hundreds of them in baskets (in one Kroger here in Dallas) all marked down and soon to go into the trash. I wonder how that happened?
Not really. They claim they can predict demand, business schools write papers on this, and they pretend they can, but they get it wrong, constantly.
So, here we are, with global wheat shortfalls and land sitting fallow (that the tax payer paid for).
But that's OK. The gubbermint will have an excuse (blame Putin). Harvard or some other buffoon with a degree will write a paper on how you can run a centralized economy a little bit better using their super duper model. It does not work. It never has. Computers won't change that.
Most of these farmers know very well what to do and they cycle the land all by themselves... It's not in their interest to self destruct and this isn't 1900 where folks are ignorant and create a Dust Bowl.
Some GS-14 bureaucrat making $140,000 a year lecturing them on farming, but who never operated a farm or even worked on one himself, combined with a government program that tries to steer output (the textbook definition of a centralized/command driven economy) isn't the cure.
You will end up using HFCS and have a lot of fatty liver disease when cane sugar could be used, and burning your food in cars (up to 15% Ethanol) because government thinks those were good ideas.
Eventually you will end up with empty shelves.
Do you realize Ukraine (many years past under Stalin) and known as the Soviet Unions “bread basket” had a famine and people starved to death, in a place that has among the most fertile lands on this planet? Do you realize Cuba, once the worlds leader in sugar cane production IMPPORTS sugar today? Of course they all had their excuse/reason for this...
But I am sure our government is a lot smarter. Our bureaucrats are different and all about efficiency and customer service, fully accountable for their failures. Our politicians are nicer and more fair, leading by example and setting high moral standards and incorruptible. And the two of them together will lead the US into nirvana, perfection, (utopia) just like the Department of Education has led public education, the CDC/FDA/NIH has made health care better, the DEA has solved the drug problems, TSA protects us from terrorism and the FCC has made communications more competitive (hahaha), fair, and clean...
Every government agency out there will tell you how great they are doing, and they are all just barely effective, forget efficient. Go to the state department and you'll pay a bunch for a passport you MIGHT get in 12 weeks, folks will stand in the weather in line for 4 hours to get a Visa, their travel advisory web page is a joke (worthless)... But their staff gets time off for LGBTQIA parades and to watch some goofy movies promoting this (paid to watch movies - nice), while that dumb farmer is working his ass off unless he is paid not to grow crops by the government.
As we become more like the Soviets (centralized), expect things to become more like in the former Soviet Union- stupid.
BTW, when will the government which has so wisely managed our energy policy implement a fuel rationing program? That should fix the problem! That's the sort of crap idiots in government think up. If it were a free market and you didn't have government meddling (federal land bans, offshore bans, pipeline cancellations, ethanol, ridiculous EPA soot standards, a unnecessary war we started and the disruptions that caused, trying to throttle or ramp up Saudi production on demand which doesn't really work that fast even with their best effort...), you'd be paying $1.50 or less a gallon. Do you believe that? Why do you think you're paying at the pump what you are today? Is it evil Putin? Is it the evil Saudis? Or could it be our own government that created this?