For guys that are paying "going rate" on rents, yes rent is the biggest problem.     You can point fingers at every other expense that needs trimming, rent by itself makes up ~40% of the cost of putting an acre in the ground.   That's where the bullseye needs to be for operations that are bleeding red ink.

Then you try to say that a landowner is owed 4% ROI on land value/price, no they are not.    They can over pay/over value their land all they want, over the long term they're only going to get what can can be farmed out of the ground and the govt.      They are not subsidizing the farmer because they over payed for land, they subsidized whoever they bought the land from at too high of price.  

And I 100% do not think it is the taxpayers job to subsidize landowners poor decision to over pay for land.     Which is exactly what is currently going on with farm subsidies and subsidizes crop insurance.



I get it, you own lots of land and don't want to see the value or ROI decline.   Neither do the companies selling the inputs you want to cut, so the only answer is to keep gouging the taxpayer and keep increasing the federal deficit because no one wants to give up what they think they deserve.