#WT 42 - Federal Farm Plots

60 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

queen olive
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There has been some discussion of federal farm plots similar to last cycle. Let's decide if we want to do that; I would be in favor of it.

spiral hamlet
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My vision as a farmer:

  1. Districts are given on request by the Federal government and must be reviewed before approval (just to ensure we're not districting someone's backyard).

1a. If the player of a nearby property gives their approval, closer districting can also be approved.

  1. Districts will revert to public land if the owner joins the Abandoned group

2a. Districts can be manually reverted to public land via the Federal government if the land is not being used, even if the owner is active.

2a1. If the federal government reverts land from an active farmer, they must compensate for any crops or property that the farmer is unable to reclaim.

bright oxide
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Alternative proposal.
The problem - to stabilize food market a bit, especially at early stages of development, and to decrease or redistribute monetary stress on farmers.
The solution - to bind minimal crop prices to fixed number, and to implement federation-wide system of payouts and taxes for processing of any non-private land, based on dedicated governmental bank account, without designating the land manually.

Definitions:

  1. Federal bank account - technical bank account, which should belong to federal government (ideally - under control of dedicated specialist/advisor), and through which all the payments should be processed.
  2. Unclaimed land - any federal land (including territory in jurisdiction of towns) that is not technically claimed/owned by a person, company or other non-commercial entity.
  3. Minimal crop prices - lower limit at which crops in question could be sold. Main purpose is to use this number for calculations of payments, but, to stabilize mid- and end-game market, it could be made legally and/or technically enforceable. Have to mention that trees and other wood products are not related to this idea, only food and cash crops.
  4. Land processing - any agriculture-related action done to unclaimed land by citizens, such as plowing, fertilizing, sowing and harvesting, which would provoke certain tax or payment transactions from federal bank account, depending on action and crop in question.

The idea:
it's pretty simple, actually. To solve the same problem as with usual federal farming plots, but also to automate the process as much as it is possible, and to solve some other instabilities like mid-game price fluctuations and lack of ownership, I suggest we just create dedicated system of payouts for anyone who works on unclaimed land.

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Actions that create actual value (sowing) or potential value (plowing, fertilizing) should be paid, according to rough estimate of used materials or calorie cost, respectively. Actions that extract value (harvesting, destruction of crops) should be taxed, according to currently minimal crop prices.
This would ensure that:

  1. Government can log and control all the usage of land in this way,
  2. Government would be able to extract small profit margin from the usage of land, by fine tuning taxes and payouts,
  3. Citizens who process the land could be rewarded or taxed for their actions automatically by smart pay/tax system, without manual intervention from gov. officials,
  4. In cases of crop theft, farmer would still be rewarded for their actions prior to harvest, while thief would be taxed for the act of harvest,
  5. Farmers who use unclaimed land would have minor incentive to claim processed land in order to not be subjected to mentioned profit margin between sowing and harvesting.
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I'm still researching particular numbers for the case, but the system itself proved to work quite well on smaller scale in my Darkwood experiment few cycles ago. If applied federation-wide, it could soften some rough corners at the start and closer to the end of cycle.
While I'm still conscious - any questions?

queen olive
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Seems like a pretty complex law to implement. It also makes it to where we wouldn't have to manage titles which is nice, although I guess that is replaced with having to make a pretty complex law in the beginning. So more work initially vs. more micromanaging throughout, essentially.
I am also not sure crop floor prices are necessary. Admittedly I haven't played in a few cycles so not sure if crops have been dropping in value a ton as the cycle goes on lately, but when I was last playing their prices stayed pretty static, only really dropping toward the very end of the cycle when food demand plummets (which seems fine to me as demand for everything not being bought by the meteor store plummets, kind of unavoidable). Overall I think the idea is solid

bright oxide
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Yes, that's the point. Initial effort could always be reimported and fine-tuned later, if needed, while title and map micromanagement is permanent burden, even if not a large one. Nonetheless, such law itself is rather tedious than complicated, so I don't see it as huge problem.
As for floor prices - as I said, main function is base for calculations. Enforcement of it on market is secondary, and may or may not be implemented, depending on situation. It does not always happens for endgame crop prices to crash down to absolutely misery, but it still sometimes happens.

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And, on top of whatever we are discussing here today, I'd like to propose creation of dedicated advisor/minister position, who will control and regulate agricultural questions.

spiral hamlet
# bright oxide Actions that create actual value (sowing) or potential value (plowing, fertilizi...

A handful of concerns from reading, as I understood your proposal:

  1. I think it's self-defeating to try and reap [no pun intended] profit from trying to encourage food and crop supply, which is the actual purpose of this proposal. Regardless of which proposal we go with, I don't think the government should try to make money from this as we are effectively trying to subsidize farming and make it easier. The only exception with this would be the destruction of crops could be taxed and I think that falls more under a protection than a profit.

  2. I think we should place some initial trust in the players themselves to provide the supply. Let the free market decide in this case - and if supply becomes an issue later on we can amend or add on the subsidies you're suggesting. (Subsidies for plowing, sowing, etc)

  3. The biggest stopping point for me right now as a farmer is the lack of protected land where I can plant without worry of my crops disappearing before I log in the next day. This seems more like creating public lands for anyone to farm or harvet -- I actually do think this would be a good idea but I also think it should be its own separate proposal. I think there is room for both subsidizing private farmers to boost food supply, and also offering public lands for anyone to utilize and be automatically rewarded/taxed but the main thing I'm looking for from this proposal is giving extra land to the actual farmers so that the profession can ROI.

bright oxide
# spiral hamlet A handful of concerns from reading, as I understood your proposal: 1. I think i...

  1. Profit margin may or may not be implemented. That's the point, system itself is flexible enough to serve different needs, and government does not need to actually lose money over it.

  2. It is not about subsidies at the core of idea (even though could be used that way), it is about basic monetary insurance for those who does labor in no-mans-land, until they get other options.

  3. Same point as with 2, but with certain degree of automation on government side, instead of designating custom titles and plots.

spiral hamlet
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Right, I think my main thought is that your idea is effectively something other than federally distributed farming land. I like the idea but I think both things should exist rather than one or the other.

bright oxide
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Well, it is. And I'd prefer to step away from usual custom implementation into something relatively new, which is personal goal here.

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Would not hurt for both implementations to exist, but going to assume both will be designed separately. Can think on distributed land you talked about, but that would need proper sleep first, so not likely to happen in next 12-14 hours.

true bane
bright oxide
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"This" - what exactly? We have two ideas here.

true bane
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I don't agree with controlling crop prices. It makes pricing things with your approach easier but it's not worth violating economic principles.

I think getting the prices right makes this really tough.

I'm totally down to do this if it is purely limited to a specific district, but I don't like overwriting all land like this. I would want public votes and buy-in for it

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This is a better way to do the "public" class of districts that I proposed.

true bane
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the federal farm district idea is to basically give people property. it isn't public land

bright oxide
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For protocol - we started from here #federal-government message

true bane
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but it isn't OWNED and your law only checks if unonowned land

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so it would count the federal farm district area that is intended to be used by one farmer only as if it was wild

bright oxide
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Oh. For clarity - you mean, if we implement both systems, and then it should be double check "if land is unclaimed" and "if land is NOT special district"?

true bane
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yes thank you that is better said.

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im on like 4 hours of sleep 2 nights in a row brain dead lol but yes that

bright oxide
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I'm still drowsy, so may miss something. Same problem, insomnia is getting worse for game-unrelated reasons.
Alright then, that is easily doable, and could be set in stone once district is created.

true bane
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ok cool. if you agree with the federal farmland which is basically what I guess katfish did last cycle then the law is up for vote

bright oxide
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Okay, once I can get in the game and see what is this district.

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Supposedly, in 1-1,5 hours.

true bane
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I will be asleep by then but good stuff. I look forward to voting on your unclaiimed farming law idea

bright oxide
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Agreed then, but particular squares may matter in the end.

bright oxide
# true bane well it isn't a district yet. I wuld add squares to it. the details in https://d...

Added district exclusion to the template, separated 2 types (compost and not so compost) of fertilizers.
Checked biome triggers - there is nothing useful, unfortunately. Could make some tricky limiters with custom stats or citizen statistics, but that would defeat the purpose of simplicity.
The only real solution is to tune the payout for planting to lower boundary of profitability (bu4-5 in mind), in order to make it a hassle to exploit the system. Opportunity to exploit, as matter of fact, is not going anywhere, it seems.

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Seeds themselves still cost something, so spamming them without a plan to harvest would make very little sense, so that still would work.

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Although now when I'm thinking about it, would make sense to set different base prices for different stages of server, somewhat similar to minimum WP payouts growing with time, and with at lest 2 different stages. But that is optimization thing, rather than a problem.

bright oxide
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I give up, today need to refresh my head a bit before redoing numbers. ETA ~4 hours

true bane
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no need to overcomplicate because I like to theorycraft. Go with your gut 🙂

bright oxide
queen olive
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So looking at this law, if someone does the whole process (plow -> plant -> harvest) they have to pay a small tax?

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For plants that are only harvestable once

bright oxide
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In fact, for both. But yes, it is small, even tiny, tax, which could be offset by selling resulting crops on market for the price slightly larger than baseline one.

queen olive
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Hmm, I think that might prove to be pretty unpopular then. Even if the tax is just a couple cents, I think it will make people upset

bright oxide
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I don't think people would even notice ~0,07 per rice tile, when output rice would be sold for 1,5-2eu

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But as I said earlier, it is something to be changed further into cycle, depending on market saturation and government treasury.

queen olive
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My last question is why is the federal farming district exempt from the tax/subsidy scheme?

bright oxide
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Because Willingo asked for it specifically.

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With intent for 2 separate systems to exist in parallel, I assume. Sort of insurance with which I can't argue a lot.

queen olive
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Will this undermine various town farming areas then? Especially if the federal area is exempt.

bright oxide
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Depends on definition of "undermining". It would affect them, yes, but it imposes no restrictions by design.

queen olive
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It just seems weird that the federal plots are exempted; a tacit acknowledgement that it would affect them in some ways, but not the town plots that various towns have set up for their farmers

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FWIW I personally think the tax is very negligible, but there have been some concerns brought to me which is why I am bringing it up

bright oxide
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Good point. But to do it right, I'll need some sort of compromise with Will, and maybe an opinion of town mayors.
Considering entire thing should had been implemented, like, 3 days ago, when towns were at very early stage and there was food chaos to regulate, at this point I'm not sure if it is really worthy of efforts.

queen olive
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Yeah I have voted on it myself, but it seems some members of parliament aren't active recently

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Hmm was it put up again? It seems I haven't voted but I am pretty sure I did already

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I think a quick fix would just be to un-exempt the fed plots. @true bane What do you think?

bright oxide
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I'd agree, but "quick fix" may become delayed for one more day, and that is even apart of possible disagreements.

queen olive
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For now I have voted no, but if the federal plots are removed from the exemption I will switch that to yes.

bright oxide
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That is up to @true bane's decision then.

true bane
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That's ok with me. You can remove them. I'll make note of the law to the request for farmland, and I think that's confusing for people to understand or a barrier because they need to read the consequences, but if that's an ultimatum I'd rather see Kimm experiment

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ugh i didn't see this this is such a late response sry