One of the Good Guys: Eric Herm, Organic Cotton Farmer

While Monsanto, McDonald's and Coca-Cola generate loads of media coverage via marketing and public relations, other individuals and groups exist well below our national consciousness.

I just learned about one of those people yesterday. Eric Herm is a fourth-generation farmer who grows organic cotton in Texas and has written two books about his experiences and beliefs, "Surviving Ourselves: The Evolution of Community, Education, and Agriculture in the 21st Century" and "Son of a Farmer, Child of the Earth."

Herm sees the dangers of our modern food supply and has drastically changed the nature of his family's land. Here's a sample of Herm's belief system, which I've copied from his "Son of a Farmer" website:

"There is a connection between a farmer and the earth. We’re gatekeepers of sorts. Guardians of the land. The problem is there is not many of us left. My generation is almost non-existent, and we’ve got to change those numbers soon. Prices dictated by large corporations and ignorance dictated by politicians in Washington (who are in cahoots with the corporations) are doing nothing to save the family farm, nothing to save the American farmer.Ask yourself, what will we do in this country without farmers, without ranchers? 

"We’re learning more every day in agriculture. And the hardest fact most farmers have to swallow is we have to change our ways, ideas, and methods so that we’re more in harmony with Nature, not manipulating He. Like Charles Darwin said, 'It’s not the smartest or strongest who survive, it’s the ones willing to change.'”

Herm was interviewed yesterday on the Leonard Lopate Show on New York City's WNYC radio station. We need more people like Herm. Listen to Herm's conversation with Lopate here:

 
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