> You don't want the cost of food to go up, or the supply to go down. Our economic and technological systems generally pursue what is approximately analogous t

> You don't want the cost of food to go up, or the supply to go down. Our economic and technological systems generally pursue what is approximately analogous to a greedy algorithm. This effect worsens as any sector becomes centralized. A small pool of large farmers is in the long run more likely to get stuck at suboptimal efficiencies than a large pool of small farmers. But more concerning than that is continually optimizing any system for efficiency makes it more fragile. Some number of small farmers are more likely to survive system shocks than a large farmers. A system dominated by a few highly efficient large farmers is a system in extreme danger from systemic shocks and black swan events. That is, catastrophic drops in the food supply are much more likely with a few large farmers, not many small farmers. If industrial production of smartphones collapses, who cares. Life will go on. We can forego many industries, if we really have to, so as long as we take care of the externalities (which we aren't doing with smartphones, but whatever), no big deal if they're oversized and over-optimized. This is not the case with food. People have to eat.