marginal farmer

marginal farmer (plural marginal farmers)

1. A farmer with a bare subsistence level of income from their own land, sometimes working as an agricultural laborer.

   In India, the percentage of marginal farmers among all farmers is nearly 70%.

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see marginal,‎ farmer.
   • 2007, Liam Brunt, “Where there’s muck, there’s brass”, in The Economic History Review‎, volume 60, number 2, Wiley Online Library, →DOI, →ISSN, page 357:

     First, in equilibrium the marginal (last) farmer finds that the cost of the last unit of fertilizer (i.e. the market price) is just equal to its benefit.

   • 2015, Raj Bhala, Dictionary of International Trade Law, 3rd Edition (2015)‎, →ISBN:

     (“Marginal” in an economic sense means “additional” or “incremental,” but has no normative or pejorative connotation.) At that point, adding more workers to a unit of farmland leads to less and less additional output, because the land cannot accommodate so many workers. […] No marginal product, or even a negative marginal product, results from the marginal farmer.

   • 2015, Anne Jillian Arnold, A game-theoretic approach to modelling crop royalties.‎ (thesis), University of Adelaide, page 62:

     Farmers maximise expected profit under each technology and government maximises welfare. This determines when the marginal farmer chooses legal GM seed rather than illegal GM seed or conventional seed.