Governments watch agriculture very closely. There is no way they don’t realize that the cost of food has plummeted.

But deflation has been a big worry. Falling food prices is an excellent catalyst to set that in motion. When the price of food is rising people go into “Oh shit, I need to start making more money or I’m going to starve” mode. But once people are no longer fearing going hungry they can sharpen pencils and become more competitive again, seeing their prices fall too.

It could be that the government is using this to try and moderate those effects – to not send us into a deflationary situation. Deflation is something they have a lot of motivation to avoid.