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   Vol. 67/No. 9           March 24, 2003  
 
 
Difference between peasants, farmers?
(Reply to a Reader column)
 
BY MARTÍN KOPPEL  
In his letter, reader Tom O’Brien from St. Paul, Minnesota, asks what the difference is in the use of the terms "farmer" and "peasant." Both refer to landholders. "Farmer" is a broad term for someone who owns or leases land. It can range from family farmers working with their own labor--exploited producers--to large capitalist farmers.

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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