Four fallacies of agricultural sustainability, and why they matter

Consistent with this, the downstream food industry has become much more interested in the upstream elements of its supply chain, especially the farm segments and the technologies/processes it employs, and has sought to derive metrics that measure and influence the sustainability of this food end product. [...] However, the idea that small is somehow better is at odds with the trends observed above, as well as with the long-run development of Canadian agriculture, and ignores the significance in terms of social and economic development of the growth of a professional farmer segment. [...] As productivity enhancements occurred through innovation, invention, and the products of agricultural research, it allowed for increased scale and specialization of farms, and increased the social division of labour as relatively fewer individuals were required to produce farm and food products to feed the nation. [...] As such, many left the farm in favour of urban-based occupations and the remaining farmer grew, both in terms of physical and economic farm size. [...] Without minimizing the real pain of dislocation, agricultural innovations like the tractor allowed farms to get larger and freed many people from the drudgery of farm work to improve their standards of living in occupations outside of farming.