On one side is see land cultivators and on the other hand i see animal exploiters. The first do -IHMO- a great job akin to school teacher, the latter do a horrible job akin to a concentration camp commander.
Having one word to describe both is beyond me.
That said, I do find it amazing how these two groups stick together and back each other up in politics!
But since I'm talking to a vegan interlocutor, the response will be "murderer, psychopath, exploiter, rapist, torturer", et cetera. The out-group is wrong and evil, by definition.
So there was a past in which the lines were more blurry and animals were not as hardcore exploited as they are today. I agree. And there was a time in which people in many places needed animal husbandry to survive (nomads, cold climates, etc. -- everywhere away from the habitat of the other primates). I agree.
But what I do not agree on is that these two points make the word "farmer" less "cover two topics at once" in this day and age, were:
1) animals are most commonly being exploited at a massive scale when being "farmed", and
2) we can live really well without animal derived foods/clothes/labour
