I am sincerely sorry if I touched a chord. That was not my intention. Life can be cruel and capitalism doubly so.

I would just like to propose that:

• Personal experience is no guarantee of objectivity.
• If someone can produce something cheaper than you it does not necessarily mean that it is "artificial" or even of lesser quality. It often does but it is by no means a given.
• If someone can produce something cheaper than you then the problem is with you, not them.

I am not talking about individual producers, whether agricultural or industrial. They operate in a certain environment that effects how cheap they can be and they cannot easily escape that. I am talking about the Western society at large. We have built ourselves a society that cannot compete with East Asia, or even large corporations in our own backyard. In other words, we live above our means and need to wake up and reduce our expectations. From time to time, a wakeup call comes in the shape of a farm in Canada or a steel factory in England going bankrupt. It is painful to live through that and I fear it is only the start. Unfortunately, it is only painful for those directly affected. The rest of us just trundle on, preferring not to see it until it hits us too. And it will, sooner or later.

Back to cartels and price fixing. Imagine you can produce a gallon of maple syrup for $30 but your neighbour, a large industrial farm, for $20. Obviously the big farm is pushing the prices down. You and your other small farm friends lobby for protection and the price is fixed at $30. So now you barely break even but for the big farm, the fixed price is net profit. Who really benefits from the protection?