No John Deere's here... not a single one.
And the government doesn't pay us NOT to produce corn.
They pay us the difference between the daily market price and the government
posted price up to a maximum of $40,000 per year total. They also pay a
loan deficiency payment based on the per bushel price of corn that they
would loan using your corn as collateral vs. the actual market price, up to
a maximum of $65,000 total for the crop year.

So, in fact, they pay us TO produce corn, so much so, that the real market
for corn is an abysmal $1.35 per bushel. Add the $105,000 we'll get from
Uncle Sam for the 180,000 bushels we grew, and we get an average price of
$1.93 per bushel. Cost of production is over $2.00, so because of Uncle Sam
we only loose $0.07 per bu or about $12,600 on our corn crop. Why grow it
to loose money you ask? It's like insurance for your land. Good crop
rotation demands that you sometimes grow worthless crops to preserve and
improve your land for the crops that you can make a living growing.

Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with government subsidies, they just make
the national market worse. The government subsidizes corn for several
reasons. Primary is the vote. #2 is to supply the nation with cheap food.
#3 is to have a sufficient commodity base available for export (if this
country ever decides to export anything again). #4 to keep the land values
and the tax base up.

So much for the intellectual view point of a New Yawker about midwest corn
farming.

Jim