[SapphireSun]

This actually happened back in the day. The US was originally an agrarian society and farmers held a lot of political power. Today farming makes up 1-2% of the economy. However, back then the farmers faced a problem: If you make too much food, prices fall, and you go bankrupt. Farmers would then control the supply of food by not farming to keep prices up. Certain elements within the government were sympathetic and would pay farmers not to plant to help control the problem the market put them in.

This developed a problem as people were paid to not produce and when droughts happened, there was not enough food to go around - a critical failure for a civilization. A problem that is a relevant lesson today as politicians had used faulty economics to try to fix the problem.

Modern farm policy is wasteful, and deserves criticism, but it turned the problem on its head by subsidizing farmers to produce as much as possible. We've gone from occasionally starving to death to having medical problems from eating too much. A good problem to have.