Thanks for your reply, Kaia.

I think a major part of this issue stems from the very real physical divide between farmers and the vast majority of the population. Farmers need lots of space, by definition, so they have to be far away from population centers, and thus they and their operations are often very misunderstood by those in urban areas.

How can we overcome this barrier? Hard to say, and there are probably lots of good answers. However, I do believe we need to move away from the reductionist debate that currently dominates the discussion and get people talking about practical things. For instance, you’d mentioned that you don’t want to eat pesticides in your food, but have you considered that pesticides are essential in all crops on a large scale, regardless of whether they are “organic”? Ask any farmer to try and grow large fields of “pesticide-free” crops and they’ll probably just laugh and shake their head. In this vein, we have to consider the total environmental impact of the pesticides we’re using; “organic” pesticides like copper-containing compounds or seed oils/plant extracts have a lot of production impact such as sourcing the copper and growing and then extracting the plants.

Overall, my point is that much of what we think are foregone conclusions about the environmental impacts of farming diverge considerably from reality, and more people should strive to gain exposure to practical knowledge about modern agricultural practices.