What is the difference between the Peasant and Farmer Pop type?

[Oglesby]

I have been trying to classify all the pop types that we know of and have been running into some issues finding the differences between the Peasant and Farmer types.

The way that I have been thinking about it is as follows:

• Peasant type is Unskilled, Lower Class and employed at the subsistence buildings.
• Farmer type is Unskilled, Lower Class and employed at farms, plantations, et al.

To me they seem like the same type. While I think that difference in workplace could be enough to differentiate I would think that it would need to be more broad (rural, urban, and service would be my classifications; maybe RGO, Factory, Service would be a better split). I would put both these type into rural type buildings.
So I figured that my assumptions are wrong and it has to differ in class or skill.

For class, would the Farmer now be middle class or is there a class lower than Lower Class? If we look at this image it appears that there are only classes (the cap, the collar or the top hat). I do note that there is a list of Peasant with a quantity but it is separated from the three).

Spoiler: Classes

Is the Farmer a Skilled worker? If we look at the following image we do see that this farm is employing both Farmers and Laborers by looking at the Vacancies. Laborers are Unskilled and Lower Class types. Is the Farmer the rural Machinist?

Spoiler: Farm Image

Are there more than three classes?
Are farmers skilled?
Am I over thinking this?

What are your thoughts?

 

[Lapoleon]

A peasant generally has a small plot of land, some chickens and maybe a few goats, he is generally stuck there and so is his family. He is certainly lower class.

The farmer owns a larger amount of land, specialises in a certain type of product and hopefully has the capital to invest in better production methods. He is often lower class, but might be middle class if he's lucky.

 

[BeauNiddle]

At a guess the peasant is a lot more resistant to becoming politically active.

Farmers get paid wages, have interest groups, etc.

Peasants struggle to get by and get pushed off their land as soon as somebody important wants it.

Edit: also by making them different pops you can have peasants struggling to survive & farmers having all their needs met (with the possibility of advancement) - rather than having one massive PoP with 20% satisfaction (because it tries to average it out)

 

[Karlburg]

Peasants represent people in pre-modern economic arrangements- subsistence farmers. Farmers represent people in modern agricultural arrangements, paying significant rents, sharecropping, working plantations, etc. They definitely have different dynamics going on.

 

[Skales]

The virgin peasant vs The chad farmer.

 

[MTGian]

Cool discussion.

I'll chime in regarding the potential terminology from the books that I have read (which were written for EU period Western Europe, but I believe still apply there in places and throughout the rest of the world). Generally, you see a division between purely subsistence based holders/renters/people living off the land and those that are market oriented/not-subsistence based. There are a variety of terms used for the latter, but the one that pops into my head at the moment is proprietor (often peasant proprietor, but that gets confusing since we are trying to differentiate peasant from farmer).

Basically, the non-subsistence based/market oriented individual has excess production, sells into the market, sometimes makes a little bit of money and can invest to improve the farm, etc. This person is running a business and the business is a farm (thus, proprietor). The purely subsistence based individual does not have excess production and often is forced to take on seasonal work or have family members work in the textiles cottage industry. This person is not running a business and is just trying to survive.

The place where things get a little confusing is how do you categorize the person who does not rent/hold a farm at all and just works for others on a farm? Often they are called the landless proletariat in the books that I have read.

Anyway, with that in mind, here is how I would interpret the definitions:

Peasant - Barely getting by. Lowest of the low class. Lives off the land. As someone above said, they are working the subsistence based land, which in the game is just temporary until a better use comes for it, then whoever is living there is removed without difficulty.
Farmer - Small landholder/renter or wage based farm worker. Savvy to the market. Sells excess production and has income to buy other needs/wants. Could be anywhere from middle class (if they own a decent sized farm) to not much better off financially than the peasant (low wage worker).

Ideally, you would probably strip away the wage based farm worker from the farmer, then have the farmer be like a middle class rural POP, but I don't think that is what they are doing. I could be wrong though. You could use laborer for the landless individual.

 

[Valladolid]

I imagine peasants would smell a bit worse than farmers.

 

[Oglesby]

Ok, thanks for all the comments. First off I mean 'in game' differences.

The farmer owns a larger amount of land, specialises in a certain type of product and hopefully has the capital to invest in better production methods. He is often lower class, but might be middle class if he's lucky.

Farms still have the ownership production method. If we look at the farm I linked in the original post we will see that it is privately owned (which has meant Capitalists). There are also 4k employees not listed in the vacancies. So ownership is not part of the in-game difference

At a guess the peasant is a lot more resistant to becoming politically active.

Farmers get paid wages, have interest groups, etc.

Peasants struggle to get by and get pushed off their land as soon as somebody important wants it.

Edit: also by making them different pops you can have peasants struggling to survive & farmers having all their needs met (with the possibility of advancement) - rather than having one massive PoP with 20% satisfaction (because it tries to average it out)

As part of the what distinguishes a PoP is 'workplace' we wouldn't need a separate pop-type to have those working in subsistence buildings to be less politically active, interest group attractions, etc.

Peasant - Barely getting by. Lowest of the low class. Lives off the land. As someone above said, they are working the subsistence based land, which in the game is just temporary until a better use comes for it, then whoever is living there is removed without difficulty.
Farmer - Small landholder/renter or wage based farm worker. Savvy to the market. Sells excess production and has income to buy other needs/wants. Could be anywhere from middle class (if they own a decent sized farm) to not much better off financially than the peasant (low wage worker).

These differences are represented on the buildings (subsistence farm v. farm) and not the workers.

 

[Karlburg]

Ok, thanks for all the comments. First off I mean 'in game' differences.


Farms still have the ownership production method. If we look at the farm I linked in the original post we will see that it is privately owned (which has meant Capitalists). There are also 4k employees not listed in the vacancies. So ownership is not part of the in-game difference


As part of the what distinguishes a PoP is 'workplace' we wouldn't need a separate pop-type to have those working in subsistence buildings to be less politically active, interest group attractions, etc.


These differences are represented on the buildings (subsistence farm v. farm) and not the workers.

Well, subsistence farmers often had very different politics from farmers involved in commercial(modern) types of agriculture, even in situations like Vietnam in the 1960s, where regions of intense sharecropping like the Delta were communist strongholds while, areas of subsistence farmers in the highlands were places where the US could easily recruit troops for special forces operations.

Yes, the RGO is different, but I think the politics justifies the separation. In addition, it gives a very easy to see sign of economic change, where peasants turn into farmers. Peasants are kind of useless to a national government as a general rule as it is difficult to get any kind of state revenue or increased financial capacity from their life. Honestly, if i were making a simpler game i'd just have peasants be just 'there' so to speak economically, a solid state bunch of guys doing little for anyone but themselves.

 

[Oglesby]

Well, subsistence farmers often had very different politics from farmers involved in commercial(modern) types of agriculture, even in situations like Vietnam in the 1960s, where regions of intense sharecropping like the Delta were communist strongholds while, areas of subsistence farmers in the highlands were places where the US could easily recruit troops for special forces operations.

Yes, the RGO is different, but I think the politics justifies the separation. In addition, it gives a very easy to see sign of economic change, where peasants turn into farmers. Peasants are kind of useless to a national government as a general rule as it is difficult to get any kind of state revenue or increased financial capacity from their life. Honestly, if i were making a simpler game i'd just have peasants be just 'there' so to speak economically, a solid state bunch of guys doing little for anyone but themselves.

From the Pop dev diary
"Every variation of Profession, Culture, Religion, and Workplace in the world gets its own unique Pop."

Because of this all the workers at subsistence farms (in state S, with culture C and religion R) would be their own pops no matter if they were "Farmer" or "Peasant". This also would mean Farmers working at wheat farms (in state S, with culture C and religion R) would be their own pops. Since these would be distinct Pops that can have distinct interest group affiliations (and other derived traits).

The 'Workplace' already provides the separation.

 

[Willwinters]

As I understand it farmer and peasant are different professions

Farmers consume inputs (seeds, tools, wages, etc.) and produce crops (grain, fruit, tea, sugar, etc.).

Peasants do not interact with the economy in any meaningful way no goods consumed or produced as part of their job and very little tax revenue.

also subsistence farms are auto built if there is enough unused arable land and peasants to work it though I may be wrong on that.
I do not know why this couldn't be achieved with the workplace distinction.

 

[Oglesby]

Farmers consume inputs (seeds, tools, wages, etc.) and produce crops (grain, fruit, tea, sugar, etc.).

Not entirely true.

Farms take inputs and produce outputs. To do so it employs workers of various professions (pop-types) and pays them wages.

 

[BeauNiddle]

From the Pop dev diary
"Every variation of Profession, Culture, Religion, and Workplace in the world gets its own unique Pop."

Because of this all the workers at subsistence farms (in state S, with culture C and religion R) would be their own pops no matter if they were "Farmer" or "Peasant". This also would mean Farmers working at wheat farms (in state S, with culture C and religion R) would be their own pops. Since these would be distinct Pops that can have distinct interest group affiliations (and other derived traits).

The 'Workplace' already provides the separation.

While that's true the interface also groups the PoPs quite often. If you look at your country panel and see that you have 20k farmers and 100k peasants it's a lot more informative than saying you have 120k agriculture workers. Since peasants are underutilised work force splitting them out in any overviews is more useful to the player.

 

[Atalvyr]

I think the basic difference is that farmers are part of the economy and require input for their production methods, while generating output that is then put on the open market. Peasants are self-sufficient and neither consume nor produce items from the market.

In general, a farmer will care a lot about market prices and availability for their inputs/outputs, while a peasant will not be as exposed to those things. That would be what drives them to have different political associations.

 

[scriptkiddy]

Both mean the same thing; a person working in the cultivation of agriculture. Whether they own the land they work on or not doesn’t really matter. Peasant is just less common because of its negative connotation while farmer is a more modern and neutral term.

I also don’t agree with people saying that peasants don’t interact with the rest of the economy because they don’t require input; livestock for breeding (cocks, bulls, studs etc.) can’t be magically spawned, neither in subsistence economies nor in market economies. Same applies for seeds. And while employing workers indeed usually didn’t happen in former, often they themselves were said „workers“ (serfs) „employed“ by the landowning aristocracy, this is hardly a criterium to distinguish peasants from farmers.

 

[Atalvyr]

I also don’t agree with people saying that peasants don’t interact with the rest of the economy because they don’t require input; livestock for breeding (cocks, bulls, studs etc.) can’t be magically spawned, neither in subsistence economies nor in market economies. Same applies for seeds.

In subsistence farming, breeding stock would generally be self-supplied. You would either have a bull yourself or you would purchase/borrow one from nearby. You would not go on the market and buy livestock in the same sense that a professional rancher would. Likewise, a peasants "output" in new livestock would mostly go towards replacing existing livestock consumed for their own sustenance.

Likewise, most peasants would store seed themselves from the previous harvest. They would not go on the open market and buy industrially produced seed in the same way a modern farmer does.

That is the difference IMHO. A peasant works with local resources and requires very little input, but also does not generate much output to put on the market. A farmer is generally specialized in certain crops that are sold on the market rather than consumed. The money from those sales are then used to buy the majority of the goods the farmer needs to live. If a peasant starts to own enough land that they can produce a significant output to the market, they are no longer "subsistence farms" in the Vic3 sense. If a peasant becomes wealthy by some means, they would stop being a peasant.

 

[scriptkiddy]

You would either have a bull yourself or you would purchase/borrow one from nearby.

This is input.

Likewise, most peasants would store seed themselves from the previous harvest. They would not go on the open market

And yet they literally did go on the market with a drudge and a lorry full of whatever and after selling it they came back with the very same lorry yet again full of whatever they themselves had bought on the market.

In subsistence economies the open market is an actual open market and not just magical digits created by the trader sorcerer.

 

[Atalvyr]

This is input.



And yet they literally did go on the market with a drudge and a lorry full of whatever and after selling it they came back with the very same lorry yet again full of whatever they themselves had bought on the market.

In subsistence economies the open market is an actual open market and not just magical digits created by the trader sorcerer.

I think you are conflating your definitions with the ones used in the game.

"Input" as referred in the game is goods acquired on the larger market. Not the town market in the local village of 500 peasants, but the capital M "Market" as in the free market. A subsistence peasant is not going going to go open a stall at a chartered market with his one wheelbarrow of grain. That wheelbarrow of grain will stay in the local economy and not become a trade good in the game sense. It will be consumed another subsistence farmer who had an extra couple of chickens that the first farmer bought to consume for the money from his grain. Thus no surplus or deficit is made that the game needs to model.

A subsistence farm is a farm only producing sufficient goods for those living there to continue living. It does not generate a meaningful income for the persons involved because there are not a large enough surplus of anything for them to sell in order to generate capital. A peasant going to market with a single cow to exchange it for the new plough he needs to till his soil is not an economic transaction on a scale the game is meant to capture. Equipment like a tractor that is modelled as a good, is outside the reach of a peasant, as it would require a significant amount of capital that subsistence farming by definition does not generate.

Subsistence farming might, over time, generate a minute amount of wealth, but unless that peasant somehow acquires a lot of land and the equipment/workforce to work it, they are going to keep being a peasant for generations to come. Those peasants that do end up with a lot of land and capital by some providence, cease being peasants. That is why the era of Vic3 saw a great influx of peasants into the cities. There you could get enough money from working that, along with easy access to cheap goods, allowed a better standard of living and more wealth left over to potentially one day make it into the middle class.

 

[joe9594]

I imagine peasants would smell a bit worse than farmers.

Actually since they are much more inclined to take part in politics I think that farmers are likelier to be revolting.

 

[Wizzington]

Peasants represent people in pre-modern economic arrangements- subsistence farmers. Farmers represent people in modern agricultural arrangements, paying significant rents, sharecropping, working plantations, etc. They definitely have different dynamics going on.

This is correct.