University of Chicago economics

The Chicago school of economics, featuring thinkers like Milton Friedman, Ludwig Von Hayek, students like Tim Geithner, Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, to name a few and populisers like Thomas Friedmann have pretty much put the final nail in the coffin of agricultural thought and practice with their monomaniacal focus upon profits.  Witness  Perdue the Secretary of Agriculture echoing Earl Butz once again on how the "big get bigger and the small go out."

And the people clump up in the cities looking for real employment and finding mostly "gigs" while the soil life disappears and the soil itself goes to the Gulf of Mexico.  We will not change any of this until we once again honor the profession of "agriculturalist", that rare person who attaches him/her self to place, who tries to understand this particular soil, this climate and these particular people, who understands that farming calls for physical and mental and emotional work and is among the highest callings for mankind.

"Farming" that focuses exclusively upon profit is not farming at all, but rather the grand old American tradition of enrichment by taking the gifts of Creation and turning them into money, broken people, and junk.  Just like the rest of our economy.