ABSTRACT
By definition, the core workforce on a family farm is the family. From a traditional view, when the family is young and time is taken up for some years with raising children, the male farmer is the only regular workforce for the farm. Later, his wife is able to take a larger share in work in the fields and with livestock, and sons and daughters also participate. In Chayanov’s scheme of things, discussed in Chapter 1, this is the period when the family workforce is rising toward its maximum, and the producer/consumer ratio is maximized when the sons are fully adult, but have not yet set up households of their own. Chayanov to some degree, and writers who have followed him more so, assume that family labour is unpaid, but there are many forms of payment other than a regular wage, and we do not treat either family labour or the help of neighbours as without cost.
