According to Henderson & van En (2007) this development has led to the conclusion that the total ercentages of price decline of farm produce “at the farm gate has fallen 60 percent”. This decrease in
market price has led to a major decrease in farm numbers. As an example the numbers of farms in
France went from “9 million farmers in 1880 became just 1.5 million by the 1990’s (Pretty, 2002).
These shocking numbers are not any different for other countries. Throughout the past decades this
change in farm size has been stimulated by governments as they were frightened for food scarcity and
economic depression. Essentially it all came down to the point that small scale farms were forced to
upscale production or go bankrupt.