Crops were reckoned in dollars, and land was valued by principal plus interest, and crops were bought and sold before they were planted. Then crop failure, drought, and flood were no longer little deaths within life, but simple losses of money. And all their love was thinned with money, and all their fierceness dribbled away in interest until they were no longer farmers at all, but little shopkeepers of crops, little manufacturers who must sell before they can make. Then those farmers who were not good shopkeepers lost their land to good shopkeepers. No matter how clever, how loving a man might be with earth and growing things, he could not survive if he were not also a good shopkeeper. And as time went on, the business men had the farms, and the farms grew larger, but there were fewer of them.

– John Steinbeck

The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 19. Between the narrative story chapters are sandwiched Steinbeck’s brilliant analysis and commentary on America’s merciless agricultural economic system. In this chapter he speaks on how the love of the mighty dollar fuelled the growth of corporate farming and agribusiness. As a result the farms became bigger, and the small farm as a way of life disappeared. With his journalistic background, Steinbeck had the courage to confront what he saw as the greed and inhumanity of large-scale corporate farming in wiping out the family farm.