That being said, here’s an idea to mix equity and strategies: grow hand-cultivated crops under those millions of acres of mecha-plantations. Several crops can be grown and harvested even before, say, corn is knee-high. An additional crop of climbing sweet peas can be harvested by the time the corn is tasseling. Then plant some late season crops if local conditions warrant or if you can leverage luxury inputs like irrigation. Let the hand-labor perform scouting (field inspection) and precision hand-weeding for the corn while they’re doing their primary work farming “thier” crop. In this way the Big Boy Farmers and Eco-Nauts can get the best of both worlds and synergize. Call it “Intrafarming” or something. (Neologism is fun.) When you can grow an acre’s worth of one crop on the same acre’s worth of another crop during the same year, when Malthusian alarmists are predicting food shortages, well, that pretty much illustrates the idea of artificial scarcity doesn’t it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWOOF

” World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (also known as Willing Workers on Organic Farms) (WWOOF) is a loose network of national organisations which facilitate the placement of volunteers on organic farms. “