1.) Humility? Please. It’s very clear in the article that I’m not claiming credit for collective farming; you came up with that all by yourself. I specifically cite indigenous and certain religious communities as inspiration.

2.) I don’t cite traditional non-collective co-ops because that’s not the model I’m advocating. There’s more than one way to do a coop, and I prefer indigenous models over colonizer models for a raft of reasons too long for this essay.

3.) Small farms in this country worship at the altar of private land ownership, agriculture realized through private business, and putting their products in the direct, free market. If they think this is a reaction against capitalism or neoliberalism, they’re delusional.

4.) Farming being a “lifestyle choice” (lol) divorced from the need to actually make a living is a phenomenon enjoyed almost exclusively by privileged white people in the developed world with deep personal safety nets, and I will openly deride it until the day I die.

5.) I write extensively about the unsound economics of conventional agriculture elsewhere. I can’t write about everything in all of agriculture for everybody in a single essay. This essay is purely about inefficiencies in regenerative ag that spike our prices, exclude us from the marketplace, reduce our impact, and limit the trade to a monolith of privileged white people who can afford to work for free (and write long, “how dare you, be humble” screeds to colored folks with the gall to point it out