Can we just stipulate that commodity crops are indeed locked up structurally for giant agribusiness cartels, and keep focused on the small family vegetable and livestock farming this Salon article is talking about? I feel unprepared to discuss the public policy implications of wheat and cotton farming.
Certainly. I think I've been making that argument all along. And, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that being a problem (I think it probably is, if that wasn't clear).
"and keep focused on the small family vegetable and livestock farming this Salon article is talking about?"
So, we should exclude everything that supports the notion that big agribusiness has significant anti-competitive advantages, and only talk about the miniscule segment of the market that has not yet been eaten by big agribusiness and still has a few small farmers able to scratch out an existence?
Also, I'm not arguing that the author of this article should expect to make a great living off of a 10 acre farm. Obviously, that's silly (though I know people who do think that a small farm on that scale can be some sort of sustainable existence, and this article is probably useful for them from the perspective of bringing a little reality to the fantasy of retiring on a little farm).
But I think many readers would have an intuitive sense that if you're going to try to go into business selling products whose prices are set not by local buyers like restaurants but rather giant exchanges --- and for commodity crops, that's been the case for much of the last century! --- you're going to need all the economies of scale you can get, because your only axis of competition in those markets is "price".
It's for similar reasons that we tend not to be as concerned with the plight of small family oil well operators.
This article isn't lamenting the fate of small family cotton farmers, or even small alfalfa farmers. They're outraged that it's impossible for small vegetable farmers to make a living.
What moved me to comment is that I think they're wrong about that, and, in the fashion of many Salon-featured essays, are substituting the experiences of "mid-20s-to-early-30s" dilettantes for those of family farmers for whom this is a life-defining vocation.