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Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021

Is the government telling farmers they must destroy their crops to create shortages, or they’ll lose all farm subsidies?

Sarah Thompson, Lead Stories
no

A collection of hoax TikTok videos has been circulating with baseless claims about a global or U.S. government plot to destroy crops and depopulate the planet or the United States through mass starvation. A U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman said these rumors are not true.

Several of these videos have been declared a joke or fake news by the persons who made them.

A post featuring a collection of these videos was published on Facebook in late August 2021, under the title "Farmers destroying crops world wide."

Nebraska.tv published an article debunking the claims and focusing on one that originated in Nebraska. The article included a statement from the Nebraska Department of Agriculture saying there is no government program paying farmers to destroy crops, and quoting the department's communications director: "Don't believe everything you see on the internet!"

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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

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Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.

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