It took the COVID-19 meat shortage to remind us that efficiency isn’t everything in relation to food supply. The 6th century BC Greeks understood: “ pan metron ariston”, all things in moderation. Whether one hates corporate farms and confined feeding or not, we should be clear that those things came from efforts to support family farms and exclusive focus on efficiency to feed the world. Those subsidies were also the moment of conception for confined animal feeding operations. Ryan Stockwell (1) discusses how well intentioned subsidies were “an incubator” for corporate farming. Some of the improved efficiency was driven by government social policy that subsidized grain to feed the masses and preserve the family farm. Worldwide, we suffer more from a food distribution problem than a production problem. That focus has paid off in the US we enjoy inexpensive food and we now produce 3 times the food with a 75% reduction in labor and a 25% reduction in land compared to 1948 (USDA, Economic Research Service). Those experiences drove a singular focus on efficiency in agriculture. They lived through times when hunger, rather than obesity, was the core nutritional concern for the poor. The “Greatest Generation” was raised in the depression and saw food rationing in WW II. Since World War II our food production focused almost exclusively on efficiency.