I'll try to keep this only to the factual points:

"And especially in the case of food production, we are not near meeting that demand on a world wide scale. Same with lumber, believe it or not." The US runs a food surplus year in and year out and we pay people NOT to grow food. I'm not sure what you are trying to imply by talking about world demand but (a) the world has sufficient capacity to feed all of its people even without us, the problems being war, politics and policies, not capacity, (b) it's not our obligation to satisfy all of the world's demand, and (c) while it is always POSSIBLE to produce more, one must always ask whether it is WISE to do so. Note especially in farm and lumber, we subsidize both these industries, wonder whether your California farmer or a given small (or big) farmer or a lumber company would do if it had to pay market prices for ALL its resources (including water and land) and do without all the little subsidies they get here there and everywhere. Maybe the CA farmer would have had prime Sac Valley land available to grow his crop instead of marginal land in the Kangaroo Rat's territory. Maybe the lumber company would say no thank you to having to build its own logging roads into the national forest and paying market rate for the trees it cuts.

"The plight of the family farmer.... It is a tough problem, but I believe the government should aleviate it, not contribute to it." Why matter should this be? It sure is heartbreaking, but it's not the govt's place to save an old bakery losing its lease or the shutting of a store that's been open for generations, so why should the govt favor small farmers over conglomerates (other than the reason that small farmers vote). What other businesses should we be trying to save? Or should the little guy get out of the commodity business, just like in every other industry?

"As for office workers, I think the opposite is true. Middle managers come and go, but office staff and file clerks are pretty stable where I work. The reason? As technology and capability has increased, so has the report printing. So much so, that even though we deliver most reports via email, paper usage has still increased." Actually about 5 years ago there was a big mass exodus of middle managers being let go because the compiling of reports and information by computer made them unnecessary. Remember the "flat" organization. Seems that it's not a problem now because they all went out and started new businesses. Actually, thus enriching the economy further. Maybe you are right about file clerks but I seem to recall there used to be jobs where the person's sole job was making marks on pieces of paper and moving them from one place to another. That person has been replaced by people who actually do something with each document - computers made us do more with information, thus your observation that maybe headcount didn't drop.

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"Knowledge is power, but enthusiasm pulls the switch"
- Ivern Bell