On the first point, you're right. It will require more farmers. But if you increase the productivity of the land and don't grow an intermediate feed it might

On the first point, you're right. It will require more farmers. But if you increase the productivity of the land and don't grow an intermediate feed it might not be as bad. And because there are multiple things going on (cows, meat chickens, egg chickens, etc) that does help from a productivity standpoint. On the second point, I think it'a s business that's decidedly unfriendly to scale which means that it's protected (to an extent) from being over financialized or otherwise exploited. Wealthy folks may buy land, but in this farming model it's not the land that's the limiting factor; it's farmers. And there are plenty of young people who can't get real jobs these days that are getting pretty fed up with their traditional prospects. If you could earn a real living farming that doesn't require you to sell your soul that might look very attractive to a lot of people. Now the wealthy folks bidding up the price of land such that "normal" people can't afford enough land to make a go of it, well, that's a real risk. But since the land is so much more productive it's easier to make it happen. You don't need to farm 1000 acres to make a living if you spend little/nothing on inputs and sell fairly pricey outputs. 50 acres might be enough to earn a low middle class income that you can slowly grow to upper middle class as your herd grows and you buy more land.