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by leovingi 483 days ago
Can you please post links to some of that cheap farmland available right now because of DOGE?
3 comments

USAID spends ~$2B p.a. on food from US farmers, I assume the presumption that without that backdoor subsidiary farms making less money will be cheaper. Though total output value is ~$200 p.a. so that’s %1, but price is set at the margin so actual loss could be greater.

I think this loss might already be less than the loss from the effects of ozempic.

Edit: looking at total US farm subsidies from taxpayers is around $30B which is ~%15.

Will see if I can scrounge up some links, but farmers are paid (just an example, there are many environmental and other programs) federal money to do stuff like leave strips of land uncultivated to reduce fertilizer run-off from fields. These payments are stopped and farmers are left to foot the bill. Also, technically, if a contract is for 3 years and a farmer is 1 year in but decide to stop because the money isn't coming in, now the farmer is in violation!

On a related note: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43162502

I think the idea is that farm subsidies potentially being cut would make land available. That would take time.
It might not take a long time; many farmers are on a knife's edge in terms of solvency.
Most farmers are petty involved in year to year fluctuations and financing things so hard to know how many would stick it out in hopes of legislation….

Granted this is all a hypothetical.

also a few suicides.. the process does take time