Farmer

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Farmer
grazier
(Australia) or stockman

A farmer is a person engaged in

farm workers
(or farmhands). However, in other older definitions a farmer was a person who promotes or improves the growth of plants, land, or crops or raises animals (as livestock or fish) by labor and attention.

Over half a billion farmers are

developing countries and who economically support almost two billion people.[2][3] Globally, women constitute more than 40% of agricultural employees.[4]

History

Farming dates back as far as the

Ancient Egypt farmers farmed and relied and irrigated their water from the Nile.[6]

Swine or pigs were domesticated by 7000 BCE in the Middle East and China. The earliest evidence of horse domestication dates to around 4000 BCE.[7]

Advancements in technology

Afghani farmers learning about greenhouses

In the US of the 1930s, one farmer could produce only enough food to feed three other consumers. A modern farmer produces enough food to feed well over a hundred people. However, some authors consider this estimate to be flawed, as it does not take into account that farming requires energy and many other resources which have to be provided by additional workers, so that the ratio of people fed to farmers is actually smaller than 100 to 1.[8]

Types

A farmer in Nicaragua

More distinct terms are commonly used to denote farmers who raise specific

egg or feather production, or commonly, all three. A person who raises a variety of vegetables for market may be called a truck farmer or market gardener. Dirt farmer is an American colloquial term for a practical farmer, or one who farms his own land.[9]

In developed nations, a farmer (as a profession) is usually defined as someone with an ownership interest in crops or livestock, and who provides land or management in their production. Those who provide only labor are most often called farmhands. Alternatively, growers who manage farmland for an absentee landowner, sharing the harvest (or its profits) are known as

sharecroppers or sharefarmers. In the context of agribusiness, a farmer is defined broadly, and thus many individuals not necessarily engaged in full-time farming can nonetheless legally qualify under agricultural policy for various subsidies, incentives, and tax deductions
.

Techniques

In the context of

slash and burn, or other techniques to maximize efficiency while meeting the needs of the household or community. One subsisting in this way may become labelled as a peasant, often associated disparagingly with a "peasant mentality".[10]

In

hobbyist. Alternatively, one might be driven into such practices by poverty or, ironically—against the background of large-scale agribusiness—might become an organic farmer growing for discerning/faddish consumers in the local food
market.

Farming organizations

Meeting of the Eastern Illinois Beekeepers Association, 1914

Farmers are often members of local, regional, or national farmers' unions or agricultural producers' organizations and can exert significant political influence. The

FNSEA is very politically active in France, especially pertaining to genetically modified food. Agricultural producers, both small and large, are represented globally by the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP), representing over 600 million farmers through 120 national farmers' unions in 79 countries.[11]

Youth farming organizations

'Farming is a public service' shirt

There are many organizations that are targeted at teaching young people how to farm and advancing the knowledge and benefits of sustainable agriculture.

  • 4-H was started in 1902 and is a U.S.-based network that has approximately 6.5 million members, ages 5 to 21 years old, and is administered by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
  • The National FFA Organization (formerly known as Future Farmers of America) was founded in 1925 and is specifically focused on providing agriculture education for middle and high school students.
  • Rural Youth Europe is a non-governmental organization for European youths to create awareness of rural environmental and agriculture issues, it was started in 1957 and the headquarters is in Helsinki, Finland. The group is active in 17 countries with over 500,000 participants.

Income

Annual changes in prices received by farmers, top and bottom countries in 2022

Farmed products might be sold either to a

market, in a farmers' market
, or directly from a farm. In a subsistence economy, farm products might to some extent be either consumed by the farmer's family or pooled by the community.

Occupational hazards

"Death's Album of Careless Illinois Farm Folks", a 1949 cartoon listing 275 tractor-related accidents the previous year, and 183 livestock-related incidents

There are several occupational hazards for those in agriculture; farming is a particularly dangerous industry.

fire ants, bees, wasps and hornets.[13] Farmers also work around heavy machinery which can kill or injure them. Farmers can also establish muscle and joints pains from repeated work.[14]

Etymology

The word 'farmer' originally meant a person collecting taxes from tenants working a field owned by a landlord.[15][16] The word changed to refer to the person farming the field. Previous names for a farmer were churl and husbandman.[17]

Gallery

  • American dairy farmer
    American
    dairy farmer
  • Swiss hay farmer
    Swiss hay farmer
  • Tanzanian tea farmers
    Tanzanian tea farmers

See also

References

Notes
  1. ^ Dyer 2007, p. 1: "The word 'farmer' was originally used to describe a tenant paying a leasehold rent (a farm), often for holding a lord's manorial demesne. The use of the word was eventually extended to mean any tenant or owner of a large holding, though when Gregory King estimated that there were 150,000 farmers in the late seventeenth century he evidently defined them by their tenures, as freeholders were counted separately."
  2. ^ "Operating model – ifad.org". www.ifad.org. Archived from the original on 2013-05-05. Retrieved 2018-01-02.
  3. ^ HLPE, Committee on World Food Security ,Rome (June 2013). "Investing in smallholder agriculture" (PDF). fao.org. Retrieved 23 February 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ "SOFA 2017 - The State of Food and Agriculture". www.fao.org. Retrieved 2021-03-08.
  5. ^ By the sweat of thy brow: Work in the Western world, Melvin Kranzberg, Joseph Gies, Putnam, 1975
  6. ^ Nicholson (2000) p. 514
  7. ^ "Breeds of Livestock - Oklahoma State University". Ansi.okstate.edu. Archived from the original on 2011-12-24. Retrieved 2011-12-10.
  8. ^ Kirschenmann 2000.
  9. ^ Oxford English Dictionary
  10. ^ Bailey, Garrick; Peoples, James (11 January 2013). Essentials of Cultural Anthropology (3 ed.). Cengage Learning (published 2013). pp. 121–122. . Retrieved 2019-10-10. Peasants [...] are looked down on by higher classes ("he has a peasant mentality").
  11. ^ "About the International Federation of Agricultural Producers". Archived from the original on August 7, 2008.
  12. ^ "Agricultural Safety". NIOSH. December 15, 2014. Archived from the original on October 28, 2007.
  13. ^ "Insects and Scorpions". NIOSH. February 24, 2012. Archived from the original on September 3, 2015.
  14. S2CID 51719997
    .
  15. on December 26, 2019. A person to whom the collection of taxes was contracted for a fee
  16. Merriam–Webster's Dictionary of English Usage
    .
  17. ^ "farmer | Origin and meaning of farmer by Online Etymology Dictionary". www.etymonline.com.
Bibliography

External links

  • Media related to Farmers at Wikimedia Commons
  • The dictionary definition of farmer at Wiktionary
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