Problem is, a government subsidy provides incentive for big guys to get bigger just to milk the government programs (sometimes more money in the subsidy than in growing the crop) and it slants the playing field AGAINST the little guys.
To be fair, there are some programs out there for small farmers wanting to do some good things. But it’s nowhere near any level of significance as it relates to the overall picture of US agriculture. Just the amount of red tape for some of the programs is enough to discourage many small farmer wannabes. (I’ve looked at one or two myself.)
FWIW, I really do applaud the small farmers that are doing some really good things on a small scale that may only be local. I tend to support them with my business. They’re my neighbors. One guy down the road has bees (honey) and sells me eggs. A local dairy sells to just the local area, maybe a 40 mile radius, and has some of the best quality milk I’ve had. A local Amish family has some greenhouses and market gardens that produce an incredible amount of really good food over a very long season. A Mennonite family just up the road has a greenhouse setup for most anything I’d want if I were shopping for plants. (I just bought some sweet potato sprouts for my garden a couple of days ago.) And so on. Those are all people I support with my spending dollars. I believe in what they’re doing, yes, but they sell good stuff, direct to the customer, at prices that compete very nicely with anything that Walmart has to sell, with quality that is head n shoulders about anything Walmart could hope for.
I can understand that scaling up from such an operation could be quite difficult and it might introduce a lot of things that would add dramatically to the costs involved. But every one of the people I mentioned above is doing what they’re doing to make money. It’s not a charity thing. There is no fancy advertising, no fancy packaging, and for some, there isn’t even a phone number. But when word gets out to the local area, they sell their stuff. (The Amish produce stand, for example, had some nice strawberries. I stopped in one day and asked about them, they were sold out. They told me that they had picked a few hundred quarts last Wednesday and sold out within a couple of hours. Then they picked another few hundred quarts on Thursday and sold out within the day. I showed up early on Friday and was able to get a few quarts… there were about 15 or 20 quarts left.)
I have to wonder, if some of the huge tracts were divided up into 10 to say 40 acre tracts and were given a manager/owner/caretaker to make the most of that tract, what would the outcome be? I suspect with management geared towards soil building, preservation and sustainability, there would be some small farmers that would not only survive but thrive. Of course, there are some that say it can’t be done. Tell that to the likes of Joel Salatin. He’s been told it can’t be done. Tell that to Jean Luc Fortier. Those are two of the superstars that have put their money where their mouth is and are doing it. Do a little digging and you’ll find many others out there quietly making their living doing it, some of them a pretty decent living at that.