My family was intimately involved in the raising of tobacco for many generations. In just my lifetime I saw it evolve from an enterprise devoted to quality, that could sustain a family comfortably on a very small acreage, to a factory style operation where quality was little valued and it took many acres to sustain a family, it you could make a profit at all.
I remember my grandparents slowly turning the stalk in their hands and carefully pulling off the leaves into five grades, allowing only the most skillful to actually tie the leaves into a hand, all so it would look good on the sales floor. I lived to see the leaves grabbed by the handful and pushed onto sheets in only one grade.
The same thing has happened across all of agriculture. It has come slower to cattle than other products, but coming it is. Low profit margins and competitive markets are not the end all and be all. They do not even benefit the consumer in the long run. People that once worked on the farm now draw a check for doing nothing. I do not think the quality of our food has improved. In fact, most of what comes out of WalMart is slow poison.
This is just my opinion; and I do not know the answer.