They have limited their farms to a scale that is compatible both with the practice of neighborhood and with the optimum use of low-power technology.
This principle reminds me of our tour at Big Picture Farm in Brattleboro. At one point, the farm owners mentioned that they made a conscious choice to not expand their farm by buying more equipment and goats for their caramel business. I found this decision especially striking. A capitalist economy always emphasizes growing and expanding one’s business. Yet the farm owners chose not to grow and expand. In making this decision, they took into account their own physical and mental well being, rather than generating the most amount of profit, as a capitalist economy demands. Local small-scale agriculture and capitalism seem to necessarily be in a state of tension. Capitalist principles are incompatible with small-scale farming. For this reason, large-scale farms with little crop diversity have surpassed small-scale farms, according to our definition of success.