Margaret—- you wrote

This is true for the vast majority of the people in this country who live in cities and suburbs. A very small percentage of the people in this country -- about 2% -- live on small family farms, where both adults and children would be familiar with and work on old-style machines that do not have precision parts. Those people certainly do know how to work with their hands -- they have to, in order to keep the family farm going, and to be able to survice economically. But fewer and fewer people are living on small family farms, as those farms get sold to larger and larger busineses, who employ relatviely few people to work on the machines that plant and harvest the crops.

We are retired 3rd generation orchardists and vegetable growers who were in a family farming business and our son is a manager with Grimmway Farms in Bakersfield (think Bunny Luv carrots) We still have almond and peach orchards in Modesto farmed by our nephew. Please be assured that your idyllic view of family farming is just that, idyllic, and the most work they do with their hands these days is often typing up the reports of their farming activities to fulfill gummint regulations. They get their hands dirty changing irrigation pipes and loading bins onto trucks. They have to be “big” rather than small to afford the tractors and harvesting equipment to replace the workers no longer available to them. And thats why they sell to the big farms.