Throughout the years the land become further and further centrally controlled. This goes in cycles so we might move back to more decentralized control of land. From 1970s onward basically all land came under control of the state / banks in the Netherlands. I was driving around with my uncle and he build most of the roads in our region. He talked about the big land swap, that was conducted by the Dutch government from 1971 onwards. Throughout the country there were many protests as land was being taken from farmers back in those days. There was however unlimited money available to achieve the unification and scaling of our land. When you drive through the Netherlands a large part you see is centrally planned farmland. My uncle was thinking back to the time where general small regenerative family farming took place. Beautiful hedges marking the dispersed patched of land owned by many families. No wonder the protests were fierce at some locations: https://youtu.be/EHwSXiENxLU