When looking at the current structure of agriculture, I think the context is long term undercurrents & cycles. First is the green revolution and its post credi

When looking at the current structure of agriculture, I think the context is long term undercurrents & cycles. First is the green revolution and its post credits. This is one of history's great undercurrents and it meant that fewer people worked in farming every decade for a long time. Urbanisation, industrialisation and their consequences are all underpinned by this centuries long undercurrent. Kind like Moore's law, but slower. The second one is more of a Hegelian pendulum swing. Dylanfm mentioned the nixon era "get big or get out" philosophy. Here in Ireland non viable farm sizes were the economic issue for over a century. Farm sizes that could not support a farming family. Viability increasingly became intertwined with non-land capital, machinery or whatnot. Besides not supporting the farmer, undersized farms couldn't afford modern farming methods and overall farm productivity suffered. It's still an issue in much of the developing world. But... big is a different beast at different scales. Economies of scale are not linear, scale isn't necessarily driven by economies (cheaper unit prices) especially past a point. Speaking of undercurrents, a lot of them come from macroeconomics. The economics of money itself. Money in huge investment pools has to go somewhere. If there's a lot of money/demand coming from here, it competes with money/demand from small farmers. One or the other will own any given parcel of land. Fungible ownership structure, complex financial arrangements such work only at gigantic scale. Also, financing at mega scale is more favourable... very impactful in a capital intensive game like farming. If demand for land/farms as an investment vehicle doubles... You can sometimes think of such macroeconomics as normal economics in reverse. Normal economics: farms supply and consumers demand. A macroeconomic trend might mean the demand for suppliers (farms, companies) has gone up. When demand goes up, supply responds. Financial markets demand shares, bonds or other such instruments. These finance large corporations, not family businesses.