Peasants are farmers, but the term has a historical connotation, used mostly in countries with a sizable rural population as well as a feudal past. This is true in most semicolonial countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, as well as in some European nations such as France, where agriculture has substantial economic and social weight. In those cases, "farmer" and "peasant" can be used interchangeably in popular usage. But for largely historical reasons, agricultural producers (whether poor subsistence farmers or rich peasants like the Russian kulaks in tsarist times) in countries from Mexico to the Philippines commonly identify themselves as peasants, in contrast with the class of wealthy landlords who oppress them.
On the other hand, in countries such as the United States or Canada, where capitalist agriculture has long predominated, even small landholders identify themselves as farmers, not peasants.
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