When you don't have price controls for food, you get revolutions. Or civil wars. Just ask how our boy Mubarak is doing down in Egypt, or Assad in Syria.
If you're a government minister that wants to die in bed, you need to do three things.
1. Subsidize food production and overproduction.
2. Limit food price increases.
3. Ignore people whining about the cost of #1 and #2, because they aren't the ones who will be swinging off lamp posts when the revolution comes - you are.
Limiting food price increases prevents farmers from making money. It would be more appropriate to introduce a subsidy for food production and pay for it by raising taxes on food and then making the fraction of the price that is below the price limit tax exempt. This way there is an incentive to stay under the price limit to minimize taxes but it is not mandatory.
You can then pay the subsidy out as a food dividend so that everyone has equal access to the proceeds of "food price gouging".
> Limiting food price increases prevents farmers from making money.
Correct. Which is why subsidies for both production and overproduction are the second pillar of this.
Because by the time there's a food shortage, you can't sit around for a year, waiting for farmers to adjust to market conditions and increase output. Food isn't a cloud instance that you can spin up on demand.
If you're a government minister that wants to die in bed, you need to do three things.
1. Subsidize food production and overproduction.
2. Limit food price increases.
3. Ignore people whining about the cost of #1 and #2, because they aren't the ones who will be swinging off lamp posts when the revolution comes - you are.