I guess is about time that we talk about a debate that has been open for centuries and that, in fresh produce, is more alive than ever: what is the ideal size for a farm? As big as a medieval landed estate, or as small as our grandparents’ gardening plot?
I’ll tell you up front that the answer is neither one nor the other. And to explain it, I’m going to reach for a concept I coined in the book Freshconomics: “the fresh produce Mittelstand”. A term I’ve taken from the German industrial model and applied to our world of fruit and vegetables.
But before we get there, we’ll have to take a little trip through the history of economic thought, pay a visit to Adam Smith in Britain and even to Jovellanos in Spain, talk about physics and thermodynamics, and even summon the ghost of “too big to fail”… that phrase we heard applied to the banks over and over during the past financial crisis.
And all of it to understand why the middle way (what other authors call “the rural middle class”) might just be the most sensible path for our sector.
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