What Is a Family Farmer?

Peasant family: (ie, peasant households) the most basic social unit in the countryside that is based on blood and marriage. It is both an independent production unit and an independent living unit.

Peasant family

Peasant families: (ie farmers) rural China and Israel

In the early days of slave society, feudal society, and capitalist society, peasant households were generally self-employed households. Such individual peasant households operated on small plots of land. Parents (ie, heads of households) dominated, and family members formed a natural division of labor according to age and gender; The scale of operation is small and the production technology is backward; the purpose of production is mainly to meet the needs of the family's own consumption, which is basically a self-sufficient economy. The individual peasant economy already existed in the slave society, and it was the main part of agriculture in the early days of the feudal society and the capitalist society.

Prior to the founding of the People's Republic of China, all rural Chinese were self-employed, with each household being a production unit. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, through agricultural cooperation, individual farmers joined agricultural production cooperatives and became members of cooperatives.

At this time, the number of peasant households as an individual economy was very small, but the peasant households based on blood and marriage relationships still existed. Although the peasant households still had their own land and family sideline businesses, they were no longer an independent production and operation unit.

After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1978, rural reforms were started. Rural collective land was managed by households, and farmers became the basic units engaged in production and business activities.