Farmer

Basic Information

In modern usage¹ a farmer is anyone who engages in agriculture for a living. This may include raising livestock, but only in a fixed location (migratory, ranging or ranch herding are generally considered something separate). From a little before the rise of civilisation to the very recent past, this has been the default occupation of most of humanity (and in some places still is).

Land, and the occupation, control and operation thereof, is key to the farmer's identity - any farming culture will be heavily adapted to the terrain it works in terms of technique, crops and many other things and tradition is very important in almost all cases: what works, works. A farmer needs to rely on being able to produce his crop, year on year and there are lots of ways of getting that wrong - agrarian societies are naturally conservative and slow to innovate … although an innovation that provides a visible, tangible benefit may well be snapped up with surprising speed once it becomes obvious. Expect a farmer to know his land intimately² and be well aware of the nature and capabilities of each field - he will likely as not also be well aware of any appropriate folklore - not least because most farming families will have been in place for generations³. Remember, it's all about the land. Conversely, a farmer uprooted from his ancestral land may be more or less helpless - although set down in territory that looks like home he can probably settle himself in sooner or later. Settling completely alien biomes can be better left to people who don't know much to begin with⁴.

Although much romanticised, usually by rich urbanites, farming is typically extremely hard work with long hours on poor margins - almost all of it outdoors in all weather. All other things being equal, farming tends to require a certain hardiness of body and mind that most other occupations don't.

The farm labourer is a subset of the farmer - someone who works on land but has no agency in the work - these can be hired hands, slaves (for example in the Roman latifundiae or Colonial era plantations) or something in between. A typical serf was a "farmer" of his own land some days and a labourer on his landlord's demesne on others. Also, some colonial projects used indentured or prison labour that was bound for a fixed term. In many eras at least some of the urban population would also turn out to farm work for part of the year (typically at the main cereal harvest).

See Also:

• Ackerman
• Cattle Baron
• Cowboy
• Crofter
• Dairymaid
• Determined Homesteader
• Grain-Based Local Currency
• Hayward
• Mountain Man
• Peasant
• The Pioneer
• Rancher
• Serf
• Shepherd
• Thresher
• Vaquero
• Vertical Farming
• Yeoman

Sources ++

Bibliography

1. Blog: A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry: Life, Death, Work, and the Peasant. A look at the lives of peasants through agricultural modeling.

Game and Story Use

• Most people will be farmers - PCs aren't. Thus they either come from an urban area or are displaced from a farming community. Either is backstory.
  • "Not enough land" is a typical reason for displacement, as is "<mooks> burned my village" and "I didn't fit in" … but bear in mind that a PC that didn't fit in in one village is likely not to fit in in another one as well. Losing land for financial reasons is also common in places where farmers tend to be renters or freeholders (serfs are expected to be potless).
  • Agricultural failures (especially when caused or exacerbated by overextraction) can also be a reason why someone stopped farming - the American Dust Bowl and the Irish Great Famine, for example, displaced between hundreds of thousands and millions.
• Note the conservatism of farming communities - PCs are likely to represent all sorts of outside influences that are likely to be considered threatening at best.
• Also, the importance of land - which many modern urbanites tend to misunderstand. One farm is not the same as another of equivalent size and many farmers will not automatically up sticks and move, even if offered a larger farm at the destination.
• PCs with land to settle may have a challenge finding anyone who can put and keep a crop in the ground - good farmers won't want to move … your best bet are second and third sons who can't find land back home and don't fancy labouring or perhaps those farmers displaced by misfortune or war. Otherwise, you are prone to be taking your chances with people learning as they go along (and quite possibly not accustomed to the rigours of farming life). Although, as noted, in an alien biome, you might well have roughly as much luck with unskilled labour whilst you work out how to do it properly. Plenty of colonists starved to death before they sorted that out.
• All of this assumes the PCs aren't themselves farmers… changing that might make an interesting campaign premise.
  • They can't go on globetrotting adventures. Assuming they're legally allowed (or required, such as for levy or corvee) to travel, they still need to be back in the fields come harvest time. This means that any adventures need to come to them, rather than the reverse.
  • In a farming-centric campaign, expect a lot of bookkeeping; bad years can be devastating for farmers even without being subject to extraction, and even normal years need to be handled carefully.
  • Farming communities tend to have strong horizontal bonds; it's expected that they will need to rely on their neighbors for the food to survive a bad year or the labor to take full advantage of a good year, and will return the favor when it's their turn. In a pinch, a PC may be able to leverage these bonds to raise an army…
  • If your system of choice has rules for household management, it may be worth adapting them.

Footnotes

1. Originally farming was more or less synonymous with renting (with the payable rent being referred to as a "farm") and all sorts of things, from agricultural land to tax collecting duties could be farmed out … however, most economic activity in the pre-modern period was agriculture and the bulk of that which was farmed would eventually become land - especially as servile tenure was abolished, tending to make land held freely or for rent only and as other forms of "farming" were abolished. Then, the term transitioned from one who rents land for agriculture to mean merely one who practices agriculture, whether as landholder or tenant.

2. Literally in some cultures…

3. "Incomer" status in rural communities can be inherited for several generations.

4. The early colonial period is littered with the remains of failed colonies that tried to bring their old farming techniques with them - if you sent out farmers as colonists they often had to un-learn their craft before learning what worked in their new location.