I don't live there anymore and the friends I had back then all sold their farms to large farming conglomerates (another trend). I would guess that their views

I don't live there anymore and the friends I had back then all sold their farms to large farming conglomerates (another trend). I would guess that their views have moderated a bit, but probably more because organic can be good for business and it doesn't seem to be going away so there's less risk that capital expenditures and up-skilling to do organic farming is going to be wasted. To illustrate, when I was a kid I would "bean-walk," which is walking through soybean fields and cutting down weeds with a hook like tool manually. It was cheaper to pay local kids arcade money than spray, so that's what they did. In general farmers don't like spraying their crop with chemical--it's expensive. Farmers are pretty pragmatic people, but they have to plan ahead and deal with weather, etc. If organic pays enough of a premium to handle reduced yield and perhaps an increased risk premium for risk (e.g., higher insect levels due to a wet spring that organic methods don't fix) they'll do it.