"But in fact, small-scale agriculture is almost universally more productive than large-scale agriculture. The prevailing techniques used in American-style agribusiness were not introduced primarily to economize on land or maximize output per acre. After all, in most parts of the country the largest agribusiness operations have had privileged access to large tracts of land, going back in many cases to land grants at the time of first European settlement. For example, in California many of the largest operations were built on expropriated haciendas dating from Mexican or Spanish colonial times. No, the prevailing techniques of American agribusiness have focuses on the substitution of capital for labor, in order to increase output per man-hour and reduce the agency problems of labor—even at the cost of reduced output per acre. And small-scale operations, accordingly, tend to have both lower outputs per labor-hour and higher outputs per acre than large ones."