農

• Agriculture or agrarianism (as a category or industry).
• The farmer; may refer to an individual laborer, the peasantry collectively, or the state's tax-paying base.
• To farm, cultivate, or make a living from the land.

Functions as a noun of category, a noun of person, and a verb.

[DISTINITIONS]

As a broad umbrella term for agricultural life, it is distinguished from more specific mechanical acts:

• 耕 (gēng): specifically plowing or tilling.
• 稼 (jià): focusing on the crop, sowing, and harvesting.
• 殖 (zhí): specifically breeding livestock or planting for increase/profit.

Variants include U+8380 (semantic variant) and U+519C (simplified variant).

• In treatises on statecraft, this glyph often carries moral weight as the "root" (本) of the state—representing stability and ancestral duty—contrasted with commerce (商), the "branch." In these contexts, consider translations such as "the agrarian ideal" or "the peasantry."
• Phrases regarding the abandonment of farming (e.g., 棄農) typically signal systemic collapse, flight from taxation, or social unrest rather than a simple change in occupation.