Could we reduce corn planting density to lower costs, reduce production and increase prices?

Question

I notice at Living History Farms field corn planting density has gone up over several decades resulting in more production. Reducing production could eliminate the need for price supports and allow us to pay the real cost of our food.

Answer 1

1. The problem today, and for the foreseeable future, is that food prices are too high, not too low. And in the developing countries, that means grain prices are too high, not just the cost of processed foods.

2. In the developed countries, most of the money you pay for food does not go to the farmers but to all the intermediaries. I don't know what you consider to be the "real cost of our food" but price supports have very little effect on prices consumers see.

3. If your proposal is to eliminate the need for price supports by having farmers grow less, then you have a major problem in your accounting. If prices go up because there is less food available, then each farmer gets less too, because though the price per bushel may go up, the farmer has fewer bushels to sell.

4. With current agricultural practices, decreasing planting density is not a cost-effective way to reduce yield. It is cheaper just to plant fewer acres at the current density.

5. No matter what your proposed mechanism, how are you going to enforce it? Are you going to send inspectors out to every field in the entire country? Every farmer will have an incentive to break the law so that s/he has lots to sell at the new higher price

(Note that enforcing planting density is harder than enforcing total acreage - it is much easier to check whether a field is planted or not than to measure the planting density.)

6. Even if you could overcome all of those objections, grains such as corn are sold on a world-wide market. Prices go up significantly only if supply goes down sharply or demand goes up sharply. If one country voluntarily cuts its production to raise world prices, most of the benefit will go to other countries, those who don't cut production, and that is even they don't increase their production to compensate.

Just remember Garret Hardin's restatement of the fundamental law of ecology: "We can never do merely one thing"

http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/info...

http://www.paganlibrary.com/reference/fu...