Are you asking if the host has to be present in a multiplayer game? If so, yes, since the guests can't join if the host isn't playing and when the host leaves I think all the farmhands get kicked too.
That's correct. The host is, well, hosting the game, and if they aren't there, there's nothing to connect to. There are some mods for always on farms, but that requires the host to leave their PC on all the time.
For the game to support this natively would be both more complex and more expensive than the current implementation.