Farm owner: Without immigrants 'this town would die'

[paleotn]

25. Not really.

Most of what we would call family farms are set up as corporations. Tax law etc. is set up in such a way that most are forced to form corporations of various flavors...LLCs, etc. There are true corporately run farms, as the meme goes, but they're few in number. Also, due to prices of farm output actually received by the producers, particularly commodity grains and the like, farmers are forced to get big or leave the business. They can only survive on economies of scale or find some niche like organics, but even that niche is closing fast. That's a big reason why food as a % of disposable income in America is at an all time low. Pardon the pun, but there's a price we pay for relatively inexpensive food. Part of that price is farmers having to find cheaper labor simply to survive. Farm families don't produce 10 or 12 kids anymore. Here's an interesting article from NPR on that subject...

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/02/389578089/your-grandparents-spent-more-of-their-money-on-food-than-you-do