Yes, and there well should be. I’ve long thought (and written) that mid-sized farms and cooperatives are the way to solve the supply and distribution problem that small-scale organic agriculture in America faces. Tom Philpott, however, in his most recent column for Grist, attacks the question in his typically articulate, rational way. “No matter what happens to industrial-food prices,” he writes, “‘good, clean and fair’ food won’t conquer the American diet until we produce more of it and have the means for distributing it….It’s precisely these mid-sized farms that could ramp up local and regional food chains to a point where they supply a large part of the American diet.”

There are plenty of mid-sized farms in America, Philpott reports (about a third of all farms). But they’re operating at a loss and shutting down at alarming rates: on average, farms with revenues between $100,000 and $249,000 have an “operating profit margin” of -1.8%. (Yes, that’s a negative number. To compare, farms that generate more than $500,000 a year have an average profit margin of 16 percent.)

Philpott pinpoints the lack of infrastructure for mid-sized farmers as a key reason for this problem. The locally owned grocery stores, slaughterhouses, and canneries they’d have worked with have disappeared into the folds of massive corporate consolidation, and the mid-sized farmers don’t have the leverage to invest in those themselves.

There’s no magic solution to this problem, other than support from local communities (Philpott gives several good examples here). But that shouldn’t be underestimated—and it’s the only way forward.