Reasons? Economies of scale; increased opportunity to redefine field boundaries in favour of large plots of land; increased mechanisation; generally greater integration into agro-industry production lines; "competitive" attitudes prevalent among the upwardly mobile new kulaks at the head of enterprises with higher capitalisation than the older generation of farms.

In other words, a radically smaller number of workers on the land replaced by high-energy inputs; industrial productivism; the drive to ever-lower prices with no respect for food quality or the environment.

It is beyond me why a farmer should get out of business by transfering his holding to another farmer, nor can I understand why that should "boost competitiveness."

Well, I imagine that it has to do something with farm size.

In the US, the average farm size is around 170 hectares. In Britain it's less than a third that.

Why does size matter?

Farming is increasingly a business that relies upon large field sizes in order to justify investment in highly expensive equipment.

Last July, Iowa-based Kinze Manufacturing gathered its dealers to debut a new on-farm toy: a John Deere tractor pulling a grain cart. The scene might have been unremarkable--dealers have seen the cart in action countless times--except that there was no one at the wheel.

The driverless tractor won admirers at NPR, Wired, and the Wall Street Journal. But Midwesterners saw Kinze's system as a welcome but predictable upgrade in the über-mechanized world of commodity growing. For more than a decade, farmers have enjoyed the advances of precision agriculture. The highest-tech farm vehicles across the country now boast real-time kinematic GPS and auto-steer technology. Farmers are just along for the ride, accompanied by  Beyoncé videos.

There's no doubt that big bots are the future of big ag. The question is whether autonomous technologies will ever penetrate the rest of the market--smaller-scale, diversified, labor-intensive operations.

This is probably what the EU is trying to push along by encouraging small farmers, who probably can't afford all this, to sell out, consolidating holdings.


And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg