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Wisconsin farmers protesting Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposals.    Jonathan Bloy   

The food movement will show up to this Sunday’s big climate march in New York. Vandana Shiva and the Organic Consumers Association will be there. Medium-sized family farmers and big agribusiness should show up, too.

Conventional farmers frequently tell me that they care about the environment. Their farms are a personal stake in the environment! And they’re sick of being characterized as the evil twin of virtuous organic agriculture.

After I wrote this essay saying that farmers and foodies should be friends, farmers have been telling me, okay, great – but how do I get urbanites to listen to anything I say?

Here’s one answer: If you want someone to listen to you, you have to demonstrate that you are trustworthy and working on the same goals. More and more farmers – even in the more conservative parts of the country – are accepting the reality of climate change and understand the threat it poses to their livelihoods. In a study of Iowa farmers, the question of government intervention to reduce greenhouse gas emissions produced an even split: one third thought it was a bad idea, one third thought it was a good idea, and one third were uncertain. A majority of farmers (62 percent) said that they thought they would need to do more to protect their land against extreme weather in the future.

The same goes for agribusiness. The food giant Cargill recently announced: “Cargill sees climate change as a risk influencing our ability to create a more food-secure world.”