Verlyn Klinkenborg and "the pollution of factory farming"

Mr. Klinkenborg writes periodically on the NY Times editorial page, mostly on nature and rural living. I usually enjoy him, as he's a good writer and often elicits my nostalgia for the farm of my youth. But romantic visions can be misleading, and today he went too far for my taste. He goes back to Iowa, where he was born, to talk about the loss of population:

The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial Observer: Keeping Iowa's Young Folks at Home After They've Seen Minnesota: "The problems Iowa faces are the very solutions it chose two and three generations ago. The state's demographic dilemma wasn't caused by bad weather or high income taxes or the lack of a body of water larger than Rathbun Lake - an Army Corps of Engineers reservoir sometimes known as 'Iowa's ocean.' It was caused by the state's wholehearted, uncritical embrace of industrial agriculture, which has depopulated the countryside, destroyed the economic and social texture of small towns, and made certain that ordinary Iowans are defenseless against the pollution of factory farming."

My problem is with the last sentence. "Industrial agriculture" is pejorative, not descriptive. "Market agriculture" is more neutral, with "mass market agriculture" close to what he wants to attack. Most ordinary Iowans, like most ordinary Americans, have embraced most aspects of the market economy for generations. Indeed, cities began when some farmers had a marketable surplus to sell to city people. Urban dwellers could spend their time on governance, war, justice, art, and writing editorials to be distributed through a network produced by industry, all made possible by efficient agriculture.

Are there problems with the current structure of agriculture? Sure. But we need to recognize agriculture for what it is, the result of the individual decisions of millions of people over the years. Now many people have the disposable income to pay premiums for organic and exotic products (and I hope they all patronize Whole Foods, I've got stock in it), but please don't demonize. The "industrial" farmers today are caught in much the same vice as those 150 years ago: get bigger, get more efficient, or go under. It's the economic logic of mass market agriculture. When the first farmer replaced the digging stick with an ox or horse drawn plow, he was starting down the road to the pollution of factory farming.