Here in the US we still have farmers who are paid by the federal and state governments to *not* farm. They still have their land, but nothing's been grown or produced on it, in some cases for nearly fifty years. It's to the point that the families aren't even farmers now, just content to cash large government checks every month or year. In addition to that, many professional athletes and other wealthy celebrities own "farms" in order to receive government subsidy so that they don't farm. (News presenter Sam Donaldson is one, for instance.)

The US government also buys a fair amount of grain from farmers, and then the grain sits in silos and rots. It can't be sold, according to federal law, because if it was it would destabilize (read: dramatically reduce) to price of the commodity. (The government may buy other crops as well, but grain is the only one I actually know of.) We have people here in the US going without food, and yet enough is actually grown to feed everyone. Our laws, most of them written to fix the Great Depression, prevent the food from getting into anyone's mouth. People (i.e. citizens, not politicians) have been pressing for decades to reform the laws, but it's been to no avail. Starvation is too valuable, apparently.