Your family isn't treating you like shit because they're "forced" to by economics.

They're doing that because they're a shitty family.

Let them have the dignity of their choice, & make your own choices accordingly.

In conclusion: No, farmers are not farmworkers.

That's not an opinion. It's a fact: farmer & farmworker are concretely different jobs that are counted separately in DOL, USDA, and other demographic statistics.

Tenant farming is a weird liminal space where you don't own the land- but you DO own your own equipment & client list, & often hire labor yourself.

Esp in today's farming where it takes a lot of capital to be a tenant farmer, it's mostly like any other contracting business.

Tenant farming pre-1980 is a whole other animal. If we're talking historical farm labor, tenant farming & esp sharecropping fall into the farmworker category.

But when we're talking modern farmworker activism, there's a big clear dividing line btwn who's labor & who's capital.

In conclusion, "farmworkers are the real farmers!" is some grade-A capitalist respectability politics bullshit.

Farmers are capital. That's concretely reflected in US farm policy, lending policy, & labor statistics.

Farm workers are labor. They self-identify, organize, & call themselves workers. They DO NOT call themselves farmers.

It's farm *owners* who are pushing that "farmers & farmworkers are the same" narrative. It's capital.

Don't fall for it.