farmer is so purposely a nebulous term that draws and exploits popular imaginaries. the word has become meaningless for me. I try to interject "farm worker" into conversations as often as I can.
having worked in ag for approaching 2 decades from subminimum wage farm worker, to farm manager to tenant farmer to technical assistance provider to service provider, I call the ones that tend to massively accumulate these sorts of payments by an old term: planter.
they are farmers in the way that George Washington was a farmer. he had a fuck load of land and a bunch of humans in material bondage who did all the work and facilitated the technical understanding. all George did was point and say "tobacco" before going back to his real vocation as a slaughterer of indigenous peoples and land speculator. behind the scenes he played a few paperwork games to receive operational loans and lines of credit drawn against his extensive land and slave holdings, but motherfucker did zero farming.
under capitalism the people we want and imagine to get assistance for conservation practices, climate forward / sustainability initiatives, positive externalities / ecosystem services, and the general risk-management assistance to grow food for humans in equitable and responsible ways often end up only getting scraps compared to the politically connected planter class. this is not what any of us working in the system want and many of us work to level it as best we can because these programs are a lifeline to broke people trying to do the right thing in an unstable world, but it's infuriating when these fucks comes in and hoover up money they don't need to bloat their returns.