Paying farms to not produce food...

An interesting point was brought up this week regarding the policy of paying farms to not produce the crop that they specialize in due to an overabundance of that crop being produced. While I can understand the economic implications of having too much of a product in the marketplace, I cannot believe that this is the most effective approach to the potential problem. The fishing industry has limits on the amount of fish that can be brought in, a limitation which some would argue has damaged the fishing industry, but this limitation is in place to protect from a potential extinction of the fish.

I believe that instead of limiting the farming industry from maximizing their production of crops that the government should instead subsidize those farms that are overproducing crops and use the production to contribute to the fight against world hunger. Although we do not see it everyday in the United States, hunger is a major problem worldwide, and the additional crops produced by the US farming industry could help to combat this.

It seems to me that it is far more wasteful to simply pay farmers to not produce crops, but it would make not only a greater human impact, but also a greater economic impact. When the government pays a farm to not produce, there is no positive economic impact for the workers on the farm, the trucks that transport the crop are not being paid to do their jobs, and we can follow the trail through the entire economy. If however, the farms are paid to produce these additional crops for a world aid purpose, then the price of these items would not be affected locally, the economic impact would be increased as the workers would be earning an income and the industries that complement these farms would have a positive economic impact as well.