The last thirty years are in the lineage of the thirty that went before: the number of farms reduced sharply and a growing share of production was down to large specialised units; the agricultural population diminished, wage-earners partly replaced family labour, farm managers were increasingly graduates. The relative fall in agricultural prices incited producers to adopt more efficient production methods, which allowed for an increase in the volume of production up to the 2000s. European policy, in supporting certain productions rather than others, modelled the agricultural landscape. Large field crops, more profitable than livestock, tended to replace natural prairies. Cattle breeding was deeply restructured by these reforms.