[a farmer is talking in front of an angry crowd, pitchforks and all] I use the worst pesticides on my crops, raise animals in cramped conditions, take their babies away for slaughter, and have little respect for the environment
[the same farmer is talking in front of a now happy crowd, hearts and all] I’m a small local independent farmer though
I mean, I can’t speak for everyone of course but a couple of the local farms near me are open to the public as kind of a tourist-y attraction. They have petting zoos and hay rides in the fall and sell a lot of their own products (honey and honeycomb, produce of course, baked goods, apple cider, etc). And everyone is welcome to see the animals grazing on real green plants, in open fields.
With other farms I can talk to their employees at the local market, I can find news articles about them, or I can even drive by and look then up myself.
Are they perfect? Of course not. But… What are you asking people to do? Should we all just give up and go to the local Wal-Mart for all our produce? Or are you naive enough to think everyone should be growing their own Victory gardens?
Yes.
That’s really dumb due to economies of scale.
also many people live in apartments and as such don’t have space to grow plants. Many people also live under HOAs, and as such aren’t allowed to grow edible vegetation, only decorative vegetation. These are difficult problems to solve, and “just live somewhere else” is rarely a viable solution.
I was joking of course, but I will say that a cool thing about gardening is you know exactly what you used on your plants instead of taking an industrial farm’s word for it