Watch Out for Farmers

Sometimes I really feel at odds with farmers. I am supposed to feel sympathy for them - farming is such a hard job, after all, and most small farmers have to work a second job in town just to keep ahead of the bills, and the loss of rural communities across America is so sad, etc. I guess I feel respect for the ones who are trying to do a good job - trying to farm organically or abide by humane standards in the way that they raise their animals.

But the vast majority don't seem to care much about things that are so critically important to me. Like the environment. They drench their fields in pesticides and rake over the ground with their tractors until the soil just crumbles and blows away. Or they stuff chickens into cages so small that any thinking person would hurt to look at them. They talk about vegetarians as though they're vampires - they talk, seriously and with great conviction, about how "vegans are out to get our kids". It's almost as though they get set, at some point, into a kind of antagonism with the earth and nature - bent on extracting whatever they can get from organisms that, they think, owe them a living. Even the occasional organic farmer that I meet has this weird worldview - what I think of as an exploitation complex - that the earth is here for us to use, by any means possible. One I met said he didn't believe animals could suffer - that what might appear to be suffering was really a misinterpretation on our part. I'd like to stick him in a farrowing crate, in a space so small he couldn't stand up or turn around, and misinterpret his cries for help.