Most farmers are big business. Gone are the days of mom and pop farmers working a small plot. They all got bought out for retirement generations ago.
Is it’s all corporate “farmers” that are your “rich people”.
My understanding is that a lot of the big agribusiness is structured as a monopsony - all the people farming a particular crop have only one big Ag company they all have to sell their produce to and that company sets the price low enough that the farmers doing the actual growing for Big Ag are still getting screwed.
Most ag business, the people working the fields don’t own the land, the corporations do. Most of America’s farmland is owned by corporations and is worked on by employees being paid peanuts. (Frequently, undocumented immigrants whose status is being used to keep them from complaining about the illegally low wages.)
Anyone that tends a farm or ranch needs to know what the weather is like. It doesn't matter who they've sold to.
Okay, then get that. Let's say I'm that big business. It means that if I'm doling out weather knowledge for cost so high, then only big business can afford it, mostly because I'm the jackass that bought NOAA & plot too, together. That means that you can't be competitive unless your farming something I don't give a fuck about, today...
The purpose is literally described as both.
It's at the end of the article.