Should We Save the Family Farm?

The deep farm crisis of recent years has made the urban majority aware of anguish in the countryside, even if the world of modern farming—and even more of farm policy—is so remote that it is hard for outsiders to grasp. At the same time, people have become more vividly conscious of continuing hunger in a world glutted with food. Abundance can seem as daunting as scarcity, though far preferable.

Now, after spending nearly the entire past decade in the deepest slump since the Great D...