Blake wrote, “Farmers can raise food in different ways, if that is what the market wants.” This acknowledgment should be at the heart of our discussion with conventional farmers who are trapped in a kind of Stockholm Syndrome relationship with the industrial food system. They have literally bet “the farm” on oil intensive, water intensive mono-crop production techniques dictated to them by global monopoly food corporations.

Today, consumers increasingly want food raised in ways that reflect and respect their values: local food production, humane treatment of animals, no antibiotics or hormones, and based on building healthy living soil.

These consumers choices are not a conspiracy, are not wacko acts, but a simple expression of the free market system dictum, “the customer is always right.” It is simply good business for farmers to change the way they farm. Wal-Mart stopped purchasing fluid milk produced with rBGH (a Monsanto developed hormone to boast milk production) simply because their customers demanded it.

Blake also wrote, “[Bill] McKibben is certain that the contracts these (CAFO) farmers sign with companies like Tyson are unfair, and the farmers might agree.” The words, “farmers might agree” is an understatement. Poultry and swine confinement farmers have repeatedly sued their “integrators” (the corporations that vertically control the industrial animal system) over the last decade.

At issue are confiscatory producer contracts that make the small family farmers virtual serfs on their own farms. For instance, small contract poultry producers actually supply over 50 percent of the capital necessary to keep Tysons and Perdue and their like operating – yet have no ownership stake in the corporation and face “blacklisting” if they don’t do as they are told.

I propose we stand with small farmers, now trapped in CAFO industrial contracts, who are fighting back and help them move to sustainable, humane, local food production.

Local seed laws and local animal treatment laws offer one path for consumers and farmers to cooperate in a community-effort to reform the food system. That is why industrial food corporations push so hard for state pre-emption of local control over these issues (the Monsanto laws).

One final point deals with farmer access to alternative information.

Blake’s letter contains a number of fundamental mistakes about the nature and effectiveness of “organic” farming processes and results. Unless farmers can have access to the truth about ecologically intelligent farming, they will remain captives of the industrial system.

The Rodale Institute, with its New Farm publication and extensive website, offers information about effective, science-based alternatives to industrial farming processes. We need to support outreach campaigns by institutions like Rodale to help farmers and consumers alike.

As Fred Kirschenmann points out, “a food system based on cheap oil, surplus water, and stable climate is not sustainable. We all are going to have change or relationship to food production, whether we want to or not.”

Let’s help small and mid-size farmers like Blake Hurst escape the industrial system – rewarding their courage and hard work, offering them informational and policy support for a transition to sustainable agriculture, and making fun of AEI’s attempts to demonize the debate.