Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
"that those super farms became a practically inconsequential part of the overall economy. " - not really.

The super farms are as important as ever.

Because farms are hyper competitive, it means that the surplus and efficiency gains are not kept by the farmers.

And it's not just 'super farms' - its' transportation that enabled 'regular labour farms' in low cost areas.

So the benefits go to distributors, packaged food makers, grocers and consumers.

In this case, mostly to consumers.

You can see the charts for the kinds of work people used to do vs, now aka we used to all live on farms, now we do all sorts of things.

This is why we're seeing an pushback on globalization, economic optimization doesn't always balance out with strategic considerations aka food supply security etc. and those are hard to put on the books because they feel like a 'non-market force'.

A 'subsidy' feels like welfare, it's really and adjust of the balance of power.