This isn't a case of my personal experience colouring or biasing ...
It wasn't just personal...
I watched my neighbours sinking too.
A whole bloody nation of farmers sink..
So that view you can chuck on the fire...

The social experiment has already been conducted....
it started almost 50 years ago here...
the results are in.
What has been done cannot easily be undone without at least the same amount of time put in rebuilding the infrastructure...
your pondering and questions about protectionism vs free market are moot and pointless here in North America.
The damage is done... the process was started half a century ago here.
What is being dealt with now is purely the result. The fallout. Nothing more.
Whatever marketing boards that still exist to protect whatever farmers still exist should indeed stay in place...
If an asian, african, or south american country can produce the products cheaper...with all the cost cutting automation and machinery of the west at hand not able to compete...
don't aim at the North American farmer as being the problem...
rather look at the environmental practices , the use of banned and dangerous herbicides, pesticides, fertilisers, and labour practices abhorred by the civilised world...AND whose own governments subsidise them while conducting a political war to dismantle their neighbouring country's agricultural base... as a good enough culprit.

Aiming at farmers here who struggle to feed and clothe their own children and pay their mortgages ...so to bring produce to your table...as some kind of cartel that is out to gouge the consumer or using a very crude club and saying "if they can't compete ...they must be the problem" is simplistic at best and low at worst.