Well, it’s not so much my idea, as one I’m borrowing from Charles Macune of the Farmer’s Alliance (who invented the proposal in 1890) and the Populist Party (who took it up and made it a centerpiece of their Omaha Platform of 1892).
The basic idea of the Sub-Treasury Plan was that there would be government warehouses where farmers could store their crops at times of low prices in return for a low–interest loan of up to 80% of the value of those goods paid in U.S Treasury notes. When the price of those crops rose, farmers would have the right to withdraw their crops from the warehouse by redeeming their U.S Treasury notes, and they would then sell the crops and earn a profit of the difference in value between their government loan and the market price. At the same time, the Federal government could use its loan agreements and first-purchase rights to put a floor under farm incomes (by paying above-market rates for their loans) and a ceiling on food prices (by selling goods below the top market rates).
But while the term “warehouse” might make you think about barns and silos, the real purpose of the Sub-Treasuries was to act as a commodity bank, giving farmers access to credit and more stable incomes at a time of widespread deflation that had hammered farm prices and farm incomes. It was essentially an early forerunner of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of the 1930s, which supported farm incomes by paying Federal subsidies to farmers who agreed to maintain production quotas aimed at stabilizing farm prices.
The interesting difference, and one trumpeted by the Farmer’s Alliance and the People’s Party is the way the Sub-Treasury could have solved the seemingly intractable conflict between rural farmers (who benefited from high prices for agricultural products and went bankrupt if prices dropped) and urban workers (who had to pay higher prices for food if crop prices rose and lower prices if they fell). Under the Sub-Treasury, when prices were low and workers were enjoying higher real wages, farmers would be protected by government loans; when prices rose, farmers would benefit by selling their crops – which would in turn bring prices back down and protect workers from a decline in real wages.
(The Sub-Treasury was also supposed to be connected to a broader system of collective purchasing and marketing associations that would allow farmers to bargain collectively when it came to acquiring equipment, supplies, and land at the beginning of the season and then selling their goods after harvest, as well as a system of nationalized railroads to prevent farmers from being squeezed by the middlemen who transported their goods to market.)
So the idea of a Sub-Treasury for the Reach is to improve the lot of the region’s farmers by ensuring stable incomes and access to low-interest credit, while simultaneously making the Reach more efficient as the bread-basket of Westeros by acting as a countervailing force to major swings in commodity prices.
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