On point hasn’t been mentioned yet. Family farms might not be guaranteed to be more eco-friendly than agribiz farms but, as Wendell Berry pointed out in one of his books (I think it was *The Unsettling of America), they do have a greater incentive. Family farmers want to preserve their land’s health and productive capacity, so they can hand it over intact to their children and grandchildren. Corporations see a parcel of land as a simple commodity to be exploited – in some cases, exhaustively and destructively exploited; they assume that when this piece of land is played out, they can always buy some more elsewhere.
Biotop puts it well. When possible, I buy produce from my local tailgate market, a group of all local, mostly organic farmers. The strawberries I buy there taste so much better than the berries I get at the supermarket. I know that the eggs I buy there are from free-range chickens. As a consumer, I like having these choices, so I support these small farmers. I also like the idea of keeping my money within the local community. I’m not against agri-business per se (I certainly appreciate fresh produce in the winter), but I do vote with my dollar for small, local famers.
Biotop: The average piece of produce consumed in this country has travelled well over a thousand miles to reach the dinner table.
Which affects not only the diversity of varieties that the big producers can grow, but also our national fossil-fuel use. Energy-wise, it’s a lot more efficient to produce as much food as possible as close as possible to where it’s going to be consumed (even if it’s not necessarily cheaper, because of the economies of scale of agribusiness).
As Sua pointed out, that doesn’t necessarily imply that nearby food producers have to be small family farms; but as Biotop replied, in practice big agricultural producers tend not to be flexible enough to fill this niche. (For one thing, in many densely populated regions there simply aren’t big enough chunks of agricultural land to support a major agribusiness operation, although they can support multiple small “truck farmers” quite successfully.)
And speaking personally, here’s another vote for the variety, quality and freshness of locally grown produce. Like Biotop, I’m not arguing that having major producers supplying supermarkets with mass quantities of more mediocre food is a bad thing—it certainly has its place in the food economy, but it can’t take the place of fresh, high-quality locally grown food.
As for the question of whether and whom we should subsidize for agricultural production—ooo, that’s a can of worms, all right, with major impacts all the way up from local economies to global trade agreements. The only thing I’m certain about is that customers who value good local food should definitely be willing to subsidize it at the cash register, and not demand that the product be totally price-competitive with the McVeggies of agribusiness.
No, the average family farm cannot compete with large agri-culture. That’s practically a given, in the same way that a grocer cannot compete with Wal-mart and a local book-store can’t compete with Barnes & Noble.
But there is room for the both to work together and the farmers that realise this can tap into a huge and lucrative market. As people get richer and food gets cheaper, the sales of tomato and rice isn’t going to be affected significantly. However, stuff like organic foods, perishable foods, fine cheeses, fresh herbs etc. are going to be much more in demand.
If farmers want to survive, they need to tap into this niche market and stop trying to compete where the agri-biz have already won.