While that is a fair contention, there are absolutely people who do it just because they want to squeeze profit, not because they are scraping to make ends meet. Like I remember back during his first term, they tried to run with a story of some asparagus farmer in Idaho who had some of his crop rot in the field because he didnt have any "migrant workers" to do it, and he couldnt find any locals willing to do the job. That got reported all across the news.

What got less reported was farmers from his same area saying "Hey, we already mechanized our harvest years ago while he didnt because he didnt want to pay for machines. And the reason no one took his job openings is because he was paying less than you would make working at the local McDonalds." And we saw a similar thing with the owner of some metal fab in Ohio during the 2024 election who was hiring Haitians instead of Americans for the same reasons, only for it to turn out that he was getting kickbacks for hiring the Haitians and once again was being a cheapskate.

So there are absolutely small timers who are doing it just because they are greedy, but I do agree it is mostly the major corporate farms (I distinguish "major corporate" because at least here in KS, most farms are corporate, but they are "Billy Bob and Sons, LLC" because it gives better tax advantages and makes it easier to have side businesses).