Is it unreasonable to expect a farmer to feed a hundred people? I really don't know, but it doesn't seem that crazy to me.  My family runs a very small scale organic produce farm, and could feed at least 20 people a modest amount of daily produce.

There are only something like 0.7 million doctors in the United States. Should we regard that as a dangerous pinpoint on which to rest the weight of the health of the nation?

Also, I disagree with PermieWriter that "our culture has spent the last several decades systematically devaluing farming, encouraging the smartest kids to get away from farming, portraying farmers as stupid and/or monstrous."

Don't confuse criticism of farm policy with devaluation of farming. I know of nobody who says we cannot live without farming, or devalues it as an occupation.

Is the nation really encouraging the smartest kids to get away from farming? Tell, me, how is society doing that? The smartest kids may rightly be encouraged to go into a field like research, but there is no shortage of people who are able to do research related to agriculture.

Nor is there a shortage of people who would be interested in farming given the right conditions. (As PermieWrite him or herself writes, "Despite all this there have been a lot of bright, young kids who have farm leanings ... .") New farmers don't have to be "cultivated", though of course training for those who are interested in farming is useful. And please first look at the kind of agriculture that government programs and support policies encourage before blaming societal attitudes for the decline of the family farm.

PermieWriter laments that "the price of entry keeps them [young kids with farm leanings] out" of farming. Well, I wonder why? One cannot have it both ways. The farm lobby wants policy interventions that maintain high prices (like biofuel-support policies are doing now), but then of course economic rents are generated, which leads to an increase in the price of farmland, which then raises the price of entering farming.

Finally, Zoe Bradbury refers to "naysayers who insist that family farmers can't feed the world". I haven't heard anybody make that claim. I'd be curious to know who has.

These are only my personal opinions.

For the past 60 years or more the small family farm system which was the backbone of the American food system has been steamrollered by Farm Policy, the rise of the commodity agriculture hydra and globalist corporate agribusiness. None of these things in themselves set about to topple agriculture but together they have done a pretty good job of destroying the ability for small family farms to survive and for anyone to get into farming on any scale they choose.

Something like 70% of American Food is produced by 10% of "Farmers"--more like large scale commodity driven corporations. We import over 1/2 the food eaten in this country--80% of seafood and over 40% of the beef alone. How has this helped the American farmer? Nafta, Gatt, Free Trade, the WTO and the IMF have done as much to ruin American (and just about every other country's) agriculture as it has done to ruin manufacturing in the US.

Combine this with an intrinsic lack of understanding among American consumers as to where their food comes from, how it is grown and how important it is to pay farmers a fare price and we have "devaluing" of farming. Not that people actually go out of their way to denigrate farmers--the media does enough of this though--they just don't consider them, or have learned to loath them all because of the 10% which pollute the air, land and sea.

And now, as if land prices, fuel prices, corporate control of everything from market access to vertically integrated operations weren't enough to deal with, the USDA--an agency set up to benefit American agriculture and to support farmers efforts to produce food--has turned against the small, sustainable farmer in favor of criminal, wasteful, irresponsible Agribusiness. Most of this is due to the revolving door policy of Washington.

In the past 5 years, and maybe even longer than that, the USDA has set about to make it more and more difficult to be a farmer. They have imposed ridiculous laws, created an unnecessary bureaucracy and are wasting taxpayer money on a ponzi-like scheme which benefits Corporations and large-scale producers at the expense of all other farmers and consumers. The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) is purely about lining the pockets of those who told the USDA to instigate it. It amounts to a license to farm, a triple tax on the food system and a big-bother system of watching who has what. Pedophiles are less monitored than Farmers will be under NAIS.

In one of the USDA's more infamous documents on NAIS they claim that their operatives should treat all farmers as if they have a 6th grade education.  If that is the agency which is supposed to support and aide farming's opinion, no wonder many people I know look down on farmers. Sure, many farmers are less than Mensa candidates, many are Mensa geniuses. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to farm, but it does take talent, knowledge and willingness to work miserable hours in all weather to earn next to nothing.

As for small family farms not being able to feed the world--I hear and read that a lot. It usually comes from those opposed to organics, raw milk,  sustainability, you name it. If the organization denies Peak Oil, they probably have people who think small family farms can't feed a region, let alone the world. Their solution is to do away with farms all together and import our food from somewhere else. They obviously don't realize that 40% of the worlds food is grown on farms smaller than 6 acres.

You have a choice--drive or eat--which will it be?

Perhaps you're missing the point: The average age of doctors is not 60, so we won't run out of doctors any time soon.