A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants existed: non-free slaves, semi-free serfs, and free tenants. Peasants might hold title to land outright, or by any of several forms of land tenure, among them socage, quit-rent, leasehold, and copyhold.
Young women offer berries to visitors to their izba home, 1909. Those who had been serfs among the Russian peasantry were officially emancipated in 1861. Photograph by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky.
A farm in 1794
Finnish Savonian farmers at a cottage in early 19th century; by Pehr Hilleström and J. F. Martin
"Feiernde Bauern" ("Celebrating Peasants"), artist unknown, 18th or 19th century
A farmworker, farmhand or agricultural worker is someone employed for labor in agriculture. In labor law, the term "farmworker" is sometimes used more narrowly, applying only to a hired worker involved in agricultural production, including harvesting, but not to a worker in other on-farm jobs, such as picking fruit.
Farm workers on a field near Mount Williamson in Inyo County, California. This photograph is by Ansel Adams.
Sudanese farmer reviews cantaloupe production, south of Khartoum
A Rwandan farmworker
Farmworkers in Fort Valley, Georgia in 2019
