The thing is, as someone who grew up in the corn belt on a farm, grain farmers by and large aren't involved in exploitative labor practices to any significant d

The thing is, as someone who grew up in the corn belt on a farm, grain farmers by and large aren't involved in exploitative labor practices to any significant degree. The only farms I was aware of that used immigrant labor were feedlot and dairy operations. One of my close friends in high school certainly came from a large farm (16k acres, mostly corn and soybeans, some wheat, and a negligible amount of cattle, maybe 75 head). Their hired labor were easily middle-class, it was not at all similar to the laborers hired at the larger livestock operations (of which swine producers seemed to be the worst). Additionally, while no significant fruit/vegetable crops were grown in my area, those remain another large user of migrant labor. Unless we as a society can accept higher food prices, I don't see this problem going away. And note that while my family's farm was small (1500 acres), the only way it has remained afloat is a cattle feedlot that is barely under the CAFO limit and a focus on alfalfa hay of sufficient quality to sell to large diaries, so not at all immune from these concerns. That being said, while I am a carnivore I heartily agree that too much animal protein is raised in this country. I don't believe that veganism is a tenable solution (and suspect it isn't actually a long-term healthy diet), Americans in general consume too much animal protein as a percentage of diet. Transitioning to a more reasonable diet is, in my mind, the only viable outcome. That, and growing way less corn in this country, there is a lot of farmland that could be producing crops for direct human consumption instead of making ethanol, which is energy inefficient and wasteful considering we have a petroleum surplus.