I think another key issue that encourages consolidation in the dairy and other agricultural industries is the encroachment of automation, a lot of tractors are

I think another key issue that encourages consolidation in the dairy and other agricultural industries is the encroachment of automation, a lot of tractors are self-driving and many equipment increasingly don't require human hands. Mostly large corporations are the kind that can buy and invest in this technology and also are the ones who can benefit the most from it, which creates a loop where only large corporations start thriving and out-competing any smaller companies. The only direction I can see for smaller farms is to probably go the "organic" or "natural farm" route, but even that would be hard to achieve because larger corporations can probably just sub-contract and own smaller organic farms too. Agricultural industries is going the way manufacturing did a while back.