ABSTRACT
We now come specifically to the role of the state, and in this chapter open discussion on the far-reaching developments that took place in North America and Europe in the twentieth century. From our point of view, this is in many ways a sad chapter to write. While policies in support of agriculture have all been justified by a rhetoric in which the importance of family farming has been emphasized, the policies themselves have strongly favoured large farmers, and small family farmers have received at best only minor benefit. The whole period since the 1930s has been one of major technical revolution in agriculture in all parts of Europe and North America, beginning earlier in some countries and regions, and later in others. It was taking place everywhere by the late 1940s. This is when the main yield increases were experienced in field crops and livestock products. Grigg (1984: 14) offers good reason to conclude that everything that happened in European agriculture before the 1930s was evolutionary, and that revolution only began after that decade. At the start of massive state intervention, however, agriculture in this region and also in most others was in the deepest plight it had experienced in modern times.
