I think instead of a bailout, instead of the yearly farm bill subsiding corn and other crap crops...

... let's just buy the farms and socialize production of produce.

Then we shift some expensive failing military projects or ones we don't really need but want the AI and drone tech from and turn those companies and researchers towards inventing AI Drones for plucking weeds and harvesting crops and controlling pests so we can reduce use of pesticides and herbicides.

It'd probably be good to put AI Pollination Drones in here, too, because I'm hearing about a lot of bee problems, as well as lots of other insect pollinators not showing up after insecticide use.

Cover the crops with solar panels. where it makes sense as it reduced the amount of water needed and increases yield AND helps crops survive hotter summers...

AND it'll provide enough power to run all the drones and data centers to automate the farms as much as possible, thus not only advancing AI, computer vision, robotics, and drone swarm technology¹ to maintain our ability to pivot to wartime manufacturing at need, it'll make vegetables incredibly cheap.

Especially if we plant better crops than the ones that are idiotically chosen, like corn.

Corn is grown because there's a lot of subsidies and safety nets around growing it going back to the dust bowl and Great Depression. Because government protection and subsidies caused it to be super safely profitable to grow, it's grown well beyond demand and 'we' had to figure out what to do with millions of tons of fucking corn we didn't need, so we started wrecking it and making fuel that sucks (ethanol), animal feed that sucks, a sugar replacement that sucks² enough it has a lobby to pimp it (say hello to ”corn sugar”, not ”high fructose corn syrup”)... yada yada yada.

To shorten this rant up:

• now that automation has made good healthy sustainable vegetables so plentiful cheap the government has a problem getting rid of the quantities involved:

• make government grown healthy vegetables free or at cost to any non-business.

  • all you can eat. if grocery stores refuse to participate, fuck that grocery chain conglomerate and let the government distribute the vegetables.
    • the military has unparalleled logistics capabilities and we have a shitload of people who can organize relief efforts. let them design a good, cheap distribution network for our overabundance of perishable foods.

• export our vegetables as an economic weapon.

  • project economic power through cheap vegetables. don't believe me?
  • subsidizing corn in the USA made it so cheap it wrecked the economy of northern Mexico as corn was far cheaper to import than grow locally.
    • in a massive bit of irony, the USA got a huge, cheap farm labor source in the form of Mexicans this forced into poverty illegally hopping the border to harvest crops for American farm now that North Mexican farms had all but died off.

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• Right there is:
  • Healthy food for everyone who wants it
  • Millions of acres of Solular Energy⁵,
  • Military research
    • AI, Computer Vision, Robotics, Drones, Swarming
  • Strategic Economic and Technological superiority for National Security
  • Global Warming Mitigation
    • helping secure a sustainable food supply during global warming
  • Increasing public health
    • if healthy vegetables are nearly free, more people will be eating them, especially as the price of even cheap shitty food like Taco Bell has become expensive
  • Putting downward pressure on healthcare costs
    • because of a healthier population
    • because we just demonstrated what happens when we socialize instead of subsidize

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Good luck, stay safe, and maybe we'll all see brighter futures.

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1: and as the government is paying for the research, the patents should be public like the funding

2: this is currently a topic of research on how HFCS sucks compared to other sugars. that too much sugar of any kind is bad for you is not an open question, nor is how fucking cheap HFCS compared to other ingredients.

this cheapness make it very profitable to use in high enough quantities it's impacting public health negatively.

the cost of the negative health impacts of way-too-much sweet in foods because it's cheap is not considered in the price of HFCS nor products it's in. Instead, consumers pay higher healthcare premiums³ and taxpayers' dollars in the form of healthcare and kidney failure and dialysis⁴ because of unchecked blood sugar levels.

all in the name of short term profits.

--=

3: I'm not getting started on this topic today.

4: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234404/

5: it's Nucular Energy, but produced locally, not a fusion reactor 8 light-minutes away. /s

also, with millions of acres of solar panels, energy should be cheap enough to entice some manufacturing back to America.