Need some clarification

[Happy Monkey]

A major function of government is to counter the Tragedy of the Commons, where an individual's incentive is to do one thing, but if everyone does it then it's bad for everyone. The crop management program under which sometimes a farmer can be paid not to grow particular crops, or not to grow crops on particular land, is a way to do that.

It's like eminent domain; we're compensating them for not doing something with their property that may otherwise have given them more profit. If we pay someone not to do something that they wouldn't have done anyway, that's unfortunate, and room for better calibration, but there are farmers who are forgoing potential short-term personal profit in order to promote the extended profitability of the agriculture sector, not to mention the environmental benefits. The compensation is a market-based approach, which I suspect is more palatable to most people than simply banning the use of certain land or the planting of certain crops, and letting the farmers who had relied on them fail.