We review recent studies on the energetics of fermions confined to a two dimensional square lattice, and the relations of these results to mean-field approaches to the t−J model. Our goal has been to compute the kinetic energy of the Fermi sea of the spinless fermions for any value of the (1) fermion concentration, (2) magnetic flux, and (3) frustration. For the unfrustrated case, we confirm that the ground state energy, χ(Φ), is a minimum for Φ=π(1−δ), which corresponds to one flux quantum per spinless fermion. We then proceed to do a systematic study of frustration effects, coming from longer range couplings, which modify the picture obtained for the unfrustrated case. The frustrating influence of the kinetic energy of the holes (e.g., by breaking magnetic bonds and suppressing the long-range order present in the undoped systems) is the main focus of this work. We find that, in general, E(Φ) always exhibits cusp-like minima which position moves linearly as a function of the fermion density x. Frustration can induce a competition between different local minima. By first considering the local minima for one particle only, we can understand most of the qualitative features of E(Φ). These local minima occur at simple rational fractions of Φ₀, and when the flux slightly deviates from these values a one-particle Landau level structure develops. It is precisely such a spectrum that generates a family of cusps that “move away” from the original flux value as x is increased. Every cusp corresponds to an integer number of filled Landau levels, and the minimum energy cusp corresponds to the one level case. Furthermore, we use perturbation theory, valid for low fermion density x, in order to analyze quantitatively the behavior of the cusp-like energy minima; which originate from the Landau level structure when the flux is close to a rational value. If the flux is slightly away from a given rational value [Formula: see text] each of the q subbands generates a secondary Landau level structure. We have derived a t₂−t₃ phase diagram indicating regions of similar behavior (i.e., adiabatic continuations can be performed with each region, preserving the E(Φ) structure) and the boundaries between them. We have studied several points belonging to those boundaries and found that anomalous behavior, (e.g., cancelation of the k² term in the dispersion relation) induced by frustration, can occur.