# Self-Sufficiency of the Farmer

## Definition

The condition in which a farmer in a remote or sparsely populated area must perform all essential trades for his own household — butcher, baker, and brewer — because the local market is too thin to support separate specialists in these trades. Self-sufficiency is presented not as an ideal but as an economic constraint imposed by market isolation. It represents the minimal degree of division of labour, where the household is the entire economic unit.

## Source Chapter

Book 1, Chapter 3: "That the Division of Labour is Limited by the Extent of the Market"

## Context

Smith introduces the self-sufficient highland farmer immediately after the porter example, as the polar opposite case. Where the porter requires a great town, the highland farmer exists in a market so small that no specialisation at all is possible. "Every farmer must be butcher, baker, and brewer, for his own family."

## Economic Domain

Production

## Smith's Original Wording

> "In the lone houses and very small villages which are scattered about in so desert a country as the highlands of Scotland, every farmer must be butcher, baker, and brewer, for his own family."

## Modern Interpretation

This maps to the concept of subsistence economy or autarky at the household level. Development economists recognise the transition from household self-sufficiency to market participation as a fundamental stage in economic development, driven by exactly the market-access factors Smith describes.
