During my agricultural history class, we talked about the reason why agriculture is often seen as a “special” economic sector worthy of disproportionate governmental support (just ask the EU), and agreed that it was because it’s a matter of survival that your agricultural sector works properly – any society is literally dependent on the fact that enough food is produced for everybody to not starve, and even more so, any ruler is dependent on the fact that his people don’t go hungry enough to stage an uprising; as has happened repeatedly during history. Yet, the blanket statement “Nobody wants to rule a hungry people” irked me, since there have been several instances in history where famines were purposefully initiated to subdue a particular part of a society, or at least where nothing was done to ease the suffering though it would have been politically feasible. And with that, I present to…