The answer to the question “who farms?” for most people is simple: farmers.

But it is hired farmworkers who do most of the work on American farms.⁵ Farmers are better understood as business owners or managers who hire or employ their own labor to turn a profit.

We first provide a brief overview of the farm economy since the New Deal. We then analyze U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data to disaggregate different groups of “farmers” and “ranchers,” thus providing a clearer picture of the farm community and economy. We show that more than half of those who USDA includes as “farmers” are actually retirees, hobbyists, and taxpayers with “paper farms” (so-classified for tax purposes), whose economic output distorts general, commonly reported statistics on actual farm businesses. The last subsection explains the origins, extent, and significance of the modern agricultural “safety net” that supports farmers and informs their politics. After our discussion of farmers, we turn to the rural constituencies that current farm policy largely ignores—workers, non-white farmers, and rural people in general—who are already pressing for many of the environmental reforms proposed in this book.

14