Right Sized How large should farms be? That has become an issue in Europe, which like the U.S. started as a social issue but is now morphing in the EU into an ecological question. A USDA/ERS study on consolidation in U.S. farms found three factors driving the push to larger scaled operations. The first is technology, which enables less labor to be required. Surveys of farmers typically reveal a willingness if not the desire to manage more land, largely because of surplus capacity for doing it. Second, and somewhat related to the first is capital costs. Financing any business is made easier when lenders perceive efficiencies from scale, implementation of costly practices like precision agriculture, and relatively sophisticated management pr...