I'm from a long line of farmers. My dad was born and raised on a farm and went off to business school in the 1960s, had a career in business and (tried to) return to farming in the mid 1980s. By then the corporatization of farming had already begun and was in full swing. Economics was constantly demanding larger and larger economies of scale. The "paltry" 200 acres of my grandmother's farm wasn't sufficient, nor was the second farm my father bought. It was impossible to afford a combine for a farm that small. He ended up paying the neighboring farm (1000+ acres) to do the harvest for him, cutting his margins even lower. He got out of farming by the 1990s and went into day trading.

> The world changes and sometimes it sucks but that is how progress is made.

It isn't progress. It's mechanization. Mechanization demanded by economics. Our food is lower quality (especially fruits and vegetables) and full of pesticides and antibiotics, the ground water and soil are depleted. With the ease of global shipping, farmers compete on a global market which amplifies competition even more. And if people in Timbuktu don't like the taste of my apples, who cares. But hey, food is cheap, ubiquitous and fewer people have to be farmers. But what that really means is bigger profits for fewer people, more environmental overhead, and throwing lots of people out of a line of work that stretches back literally ten thousand years.