You are correct--soil damage has much to do with this. Wendell Berry (among others) has written much about this. Large scale farming tends not to view the soil and its cycles as important to the process of growing food.
I'd like to see some data regarding this, actually.
I've got a good friend that owns a tree farm in Oregon, and if you listen to the environmentalists, they make it sound like Richard is some sort of maniac clear-cutting idiot who is destroying a precious natural resource.
The opposite becomes apparent if you actually talk to him about the farm, and look at the money they put into both planning and tree-farming technology. Him, and his family, view their forest as a long-term asset, not to mention an effectively infinite stream of future revenue, and a great place to go hiking.
They go to incredible lengths to make sure that their forest is going to be around, and viably growing, a few hundred years from now.
It seems odd that any large company wouldn't look at their company-owned farms in the same fashion.
Of course, corporate owners can be greedy and stupid as well. So I'd like to know more about how large-scale farming causes soil damage.
