Small backyard steel furnaces were built in every commune where peasants produced small nuggets of cast iron made from scrap metal.

The reason for this was that besides producing most of the Empire's food the peasants also produced most of its taxes.

They make it up in the mountains, little family labs, but the total of what those peasants produce often provides the bulk of the government's income.

By mid-1946 Albanian peasants were cultivating more land and producing higher corn and wheat yields than ever before.

They confiscated the grain the peasants produced, they took their livestock.

Indigenous African peasants mainly produced cash crops designated for sale in the markets of Portugal.

These peasants would pay rent to the landowner either through agricultural labour on the lord's demesne fields or through rent in the form of cash and produce.

The government also had expected that peasants would produce sufficient crops for their own consumption and for export sales, thereby helping to finance most of the government's expenses, imports, and foreign debt.

But a Maya peasant could produce only twice the needs of himself and his family.

"Nobody ever claimed Romanov was a walking charity-but at least he realizes the peasants can't produce if they're starving."