Not in their lovely, white, European metropole of course, but in their colonies in Indonesia (Dutch East Indies), the Dutch would rip up food crops and force villagers to plant cash crops instead as part of their "Cultivation System" (Cultuurstelsel)

Instead of land taxes, 20% of village land had to be devoted to government crops for export or, alternatively, peasants had to work in government-owned plantations for 60 days of the year. To allow the enforcement of these policies, Javanese villagers were more formally linked to their villages and were sometimes prevented from traveling freely around the island without permission. As a result of this policy, much of Java became a Dutch plantation. Some remarks while in theory only 20% of land were used as export crop plantation or peasants have to work for 66 days, in practice they used more portions of lands (same sources claim nearly reach 100%) until native populations had little to plant food crops which result famine in many areas and, sometimes, peasants still had to work more than 66 days.

I don't know if it ever meaningfully ate into the supply of arable land, but the tulip speculation must certainly incentivized a whole bunch of farmers to plant additional tulips (or, at least, claim to do so) for the purpose of cashing in on the bubble.

There's a moment from "Fed Up" that I'm absolutely obsessed with for some reason that this reminds me of. (AutiADHD moment).

Bill Clinton is one of the interviewees in it, and at one point he's talking about corn syrup, and pauses to say in the mostly faux-folksy way imaginable "which I don't think is a good use of corn". Idk why but it just stuck in my head.

I want this inscribed on a shitty copper ingot that somehow is hurtling through the front window of the chamber of commerce at 32mph.