This eliminates the need for intimate contact with the soil, the romance of farming. Pesticides are used on all the crops due to the pressure, again, of doing more with less. The most efficient way of farming, or that which creates the largest yield and the most blemish-free crop, is definitely that way which uses pesticides and chemical fertilizer. Perhaps the farmer is under pressure that we are not aware of. Of course, there is always pressure to compete with other farmers, to produce food cheaply and in abundance to sell to the food processing industry.
American farmers seem to always be having a tough financial time.
There are very few farmers with much extra money. They have families, and children who want to go to college. If the current way is the way money is made then it will have to continue out of sheer need to provide a good life to the farm family. Changing anything risks a complete collapse of the business if the environmental change is not successful. I need to make a living for myself now.