Based on extensive fi eld work in both communities, Goldschmidt
concluded that the scale of operations that developed in the community
dominated by large agribusiness “inevitably had one clear and direct effect on the community: It skewed the occupation structure so that the
majority of the population could only subsist by working as wage labor
for others. . . . The occupation structure of the community, with a great
majority of wage workers . . . [,] has had a series of direct effects upon
social conditions in the community” (1978, 415–16). In other words, differences in social and economic welfare between the large-farm and the
small-farm community were directly the result of worker exploitation.