Farmer

Farmer
	Woman working in a rice field near Junagadh, Gujarat, India, in 2013.
Occupation
Occupation type	Employment
Activity sectors	Agriculture
Description
Fields of; employment	Farm, agribusiness
Related jobs	Rancher (U.S.), grazier (Australia) or stockman

A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials.^[1] The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer might own the farmland or might work as a laborer on land owned by others. In most developed economies, a "farmer" is usually a farm owner (landowner), while employees of the farm are known as 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 smallholders, most of whom are in developing countries and who economically support almost two billion people.^[2]^[3] Globally, women constitute more than 40% of agricultural employees.^[4]

^ 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."
^ "Operating model". ifad.org. Archived from the original on 2013-05-05. Retrieved 2018-01-02.
^ HLPE (June 2013). "Investing in smallholder agriculture" (PDF). fao.org. Rome: Committee on World Food Security. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 May 2021. Retrieved 23 February 2021.
^ "SOFA 2017 - The State of Food and Agriculture". www.fao.org. Retrieved 2021-03-08.

[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. Archived from the original on 2013-05-05. Retrieved 2018-01-02.

[:3-3] HLPE (June 2013). "Investing in smallholder agriculture" (PDF). fao.org. Rome: Committee on World Food Security. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 May 2021. Retrieved 23 February 2021.

[4] "SOFA 2017 - The State of Food and Agriculture". www.fao.org. Retrieved 2021-03-08.

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