system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How government subsidies for commercial farms work.
gpt
This is a pretty board topic. Basically the idea is the government gives money to farms to ensure they continue to grow food.

Imagine this example, there is a really great year for farming and all the farms grow lots of food. This means there is a huge supply of food,  but because of supply and demand it means the food sells for a lower price than usually. This could lead to a lot of farms going out of business because they couldn't sell enough food to make ends meet. Next year you have a really bad year and all the farms left over produce a small amount of food. Well now since so many farms went out of business last year there isn't enough food to feed everyone and people starve.

This is the point of farm subsidies, to make sure that enough farms survive when food is plentiful and cheap that when there are hard times there will be enough food for everyone.

There are a number of ways that farm subsides can work. Two examples that have been used in the US are the government can buy excess food to make sure farms don't go out of business, then stockpile it or destroy it. Or the government can supplement the price of food, basically paying the farmers the difference between some set price and what food actually sold for at market.