Hard to say without more of a time series, but the isolation idea makes a lot of sense to me, especially because the number of farmers/workers per acre has stea

Hard to say without more of a time series, but the isolation idea makes a lot of sense to me, especially because the number of farmers/workers per acre has steadily dropped for decades. So what was once a fairly communal occupation is now fairly isolated, so the financial pressures, etc are less shared.