> Have you got any sources on these claims about France, Italy and Spain? Never heard of this.
I'm one, I worked on the first Permaculture farm in Italy, (Modena) and it was nearly entirely funded by some incredibly underfunded Ag subsidies, and the elderly Mother's pension/retirement fund. It's labour pool was mainly made up of volunteers and apprentices like myself besides the 50 year old son who came back from Germany after a messy divorce.
When I arrived the eldest son (and to much lesser extent the youngest of his children, an 11 year old boy) had to do what was done by both parents and his siblings now entirely by himself. So Sales figures were less than optimal, even if the produce was amazing he'd be way too exhausted to do all of the farming duties throughout the day, so trying to get more exposure by going to more Farmer's Markets was out of the question.
Labour was the really needed part of the equation, once we got the Team organized and with solid schedules we were able to expand to 3-5 farmer's market a week as opposed to the single Saturday morning one that had been done for the past few years. The costs of transport and fees for the stands were higher but that was overcome with a larger volume of deliverable goods, as less was perished by sitting in the non-electric storage area after weekly harvest and we started to re-supply some local restaurants with our excess along the way to the farmers markets, too.
After I left we had turned sales around to a 10-year high, reached back when most of the family (2 parents and 5 late teen/early 20s children and a grandparent) could work with only just 3 extra men and myself in the fields in the morning and then going to farmer markets in the afternoons.
Suffice it to say, I met hundreds of people operating with some variation of that model at what I can best describe as an 'underground Farmer's Market,' where it felt more like a carnival than a typical one it was entirely 'Industry only,' some local chefs from the surrounding area arrived, too. Someone with a stand near us said they saw Massimo Bottura at one I didn't attend as I had to help in the fields that day.
In short, its a thing. WWOOF [1], the network I used for my apprenticeship, has most of the farms listed operating like that for decades now. I met lots of volunteers and apprentices in France, Italy, and Spain and much of Europe as far as parts of sub-Sahara Africa.
With that said, I think the majority of Farm labour should become automated and instead of making more Farm laborers alone, its best to offer people with limited opportunities in the City other opportunities to own farms with low cost barriers to the these tools. Land, especially between 'LA and Mississippi' is severely under utilized. On a road trip to Kansas City we could go 100 miles across Kansas before we saw anything remotely looking like it was inhabited by Humans.
1: https://wwoof.net/