What is a farmer?

"The ancients had four people. There are scholars, businessmen, farmers and workers. "

Farmers (people engaged in agricultural production):

Farmers [nóng mín] refer to people who have been engaged in agricultural production for a long time. Gu Liang Cheng Chuan AD: "In ancient times, there were four people. There are intellectuals, farmers, workers and businessmen. That is, scholars, farmers, workers and businessmen. "

Basic meaning:

The concept of farmers is multidimensional. Only by defining farmers from a multi-dimensional perspective can we make the concept of farmers clearer.

First of all, the concept of farmers has the characteristics of time dimension. When studying the problem of farmers, we should consider limiting the time interval of farmers. History is a long river of time. Farmers are a dynamic category in the long history. Productivity is the most active variable in social and historical development. In different historical periods, the structure of production factors is different. There are no abstract farmers who are divorced from the productive structure. Different production factor structures will inevitably determine different forms of farmers' existence.

Secondly, the concept of farmers has the characteristics of spatial dimension. In the reality of social production and life, the structure of productive forces will be different in different geographical spaces due to different conditions such as resources and environment. Therefore, the concept of farmers also has spatial characteristics. Farmers in Europe and Asia are different in geographical and spatial factors.

Third, the concept of farmers has the characteristics of value dimension. Different scholars have different views on which characteristics should belong to the connotation of the concept of farmers. This also reflects a different value judgment problem. To study and solve farmers' problems, both scholars and governments are always bound by specific values. In order to promote the national economic and social development, whether to adopt the strategy of giving priority to the development of industry or agriculture not only reflects the different development strategies, but also reflects the value orientation. Judging which problems are the key to farmers' problems, different value orientations will lead to different judgments.

Fourth, the concept of farmers has the characteristics of domain dimension. The characteristics of the domain dimension of the concept of farmers mainly mean that different fields should be considered when defining the concept of farmers. We can define farmers from the institutional field, such as the household registration system; Farmers can also be defined from the perspective of economics, such as agriculture and other industries; You can also consider defining farmers from a cultural perspective. There should be different perspectives on whether to study farmers from the institutional level or from the economic and cultural level. The characteristics of farmers have different manifestations in different fields, so the means to solve farmers' problems should be different in different fields.

The four-dimensional characteristics of the concept of farmers show that the specific farmers are always a point in the four-dimensional space.

The coordinate names of these four dimensions are: time, space, value and domain. This requires us to consider four dimensions when studying farmers' problems; Otherwise, it will only increase the ambiguity of the problem and the difficulty of solving it. For example, studying the peasant nature of contemporary China intellectuals has four-dimensional characteristics. Contemporary, reflecting the time dimension; In China, it reflects the spatial dimension; Intellectuals reflect the domain dimension; Farmer's character, embedded value's dimension characteristics. Because the research object of the above topic has four-dimensional characteristics, we can have a more accurate positioning of its connotation. Otherwise, if the time dimension is reduced, the above topic will be changed to study the peasant nature of China intellectuals; This change means expanding the "contemporary" time interval to the whole historical interval, and the result will greatly increase the difficulty and ambiguity of research. Generally speaking, when we study farmers' problems, with the gradual reduction and relaxation of the four dimensions of farmers' categories, the difficulty and ambiguity of studying problems will increase accordingly. Only by grasping the farmers' objects studied in the four dimensions at the same time can the problems be clearer and the research conclusions be more accurate.

1. People who own or partially own the means of production and make a living by engaging in agricultural labor. On the basis of the disintegration of primitive society, it appeared with the emergence of private ownership of means of production and class. In different historical periods, the economic nature of farmers is different. In slave society, there are yeomen and slave farmers. The former is a free farmer engaged in individual labor on the basis of small land ownership; The latter is a tenant farmer, who rents small plots of land from big landlords and occupies a position between free peasants and slaves. In feudal society, in addition to yeomen, there were a large number of tenant farmers in China who rented landlords' land. With the disintegration of feudal society and the development of capitalism, the differentiation of farmers has intensified, forming classes such as farm labourers, poor peasants, middle peasants and rich peasants. Farmers usually refer to private owners and laborers of the means of production, that is, poor peasants and middle peasants. During the Qing Dynasty and before the National Government moved to China, due to the backwardness of industrial economy, farmers were the main force of social labor, mainly relying on natural economic life, mostly tenant farmers and yeomen farmers (including landlords who mainly planted and bred agriculture); During this period, except for some people who moved into cities and towns to engage in industrial and commercial operations or become industrial workers, most of them stayed in their original birthplace because of the limitation of the national industrial development level at that time, while many rural residents without land made a living by working for landlords. According to the length of the construction period, these people are often called "long-term workers" and "short-term workers" and should belong to the profession. Long-term employment refers to perennial employment, while short-term employment belongs to seasonal employment.

2. farmers, the corresponding English word is pearsty, Chinese refers to the collection of social groups whose livelihood is agriculture and animal husbandry in rural areas, and can also refer to rural labor (human resources); Farmers are generally "farm workers" (including farmers) and belong to a profession; Farmers refer to poor farmers. Farmers refer to the families mainly engaged in agriculture, forestry, fishery or animal husbandry (natural economy) in rural areas of China. With the improvement of economic development, China has different understandings of the word "farmer" in different periods. In the Tang dynasty, the largest manor took in hundreds of customers, each with several people, so there was a village where customers lived. Later generations called the countryside "Zhuang", the peasants "Zhuanghu" and the peasants "Bankers", which is almost the beginning. (Huang Xianfan: An Introduction to Society in Tang Dynasty)

3. Ai Jun, a sociologist and critic of the three rural issues, believes that in modern China, farmers have changed from "laborers engaged in agricultural production" in the traditional sense to "all people in agricultural registered permanent residence". In other words, people who are "agricultural registered permanent residence" have become synonymous with "farmers" and lost the simple meaning of the profession of "laborers who have participated in agricultural labor for a long time". He pointed out that from the current level of people's understanding, if the definition of the word "farmer" in China at this stage is "a rural person registered in the countryside, agricultural registered permanent residence".