Forgive me, but I missed that conclusion in this thread. Can it be true? Numerically, their might be more independent farmers (though even the family farm runs on capitalist lines), but in terms of the mass of output, wouldn't Cargill, Philip Morris and the other large agri-businesses account for most of what is on our plates? (Bear in mind, too, that few farm goods are directly consumed, but rather are inputs into processed food industries.) Where more family farms are struggling from year to year, producing at lower productivity, but absorbing the loss out of unwillingness to give up, the question arises whether this really is farming at all. In the UK government policy has leant on farmers to diversify into all kinds of different work (bed and breakfast, giving over fields to different sports etc - or indeed organic farming) after a number of decisive collapses in the food chain (BSE, foot and mouth). We did have plans to pay our farmers to become countryside custodians, and the EU has been paying farmers to 'set aside' their land for decades. All of those land retirement programmes have been going for years, and in fact probably contributed to the food shortage since 2005.