sodbuster
Other forms: sodbusters
Someone who works the land, planting vegetables in the spring and harvesting them in the fall, is a sodbuster. When city life gets overwhelming, you may dream of moving west to be a sodbuster.
This old-fashioned term for a farmer was coined in the U.S. around 1897, when it specifically referred to a pioneer working on Western land. It comes from the sense of "busting" the earth, digging and turning it over before planting. A 19th-century John Deere plow shared the name. In the 1980s, a federal agriculture program called Sodbuster had the opposite meaning: it discouraged plowing land that was prone to erosion.
Definitions of sodbuster
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a person who operates a farmsynonyms: farmer, granger, husbandmantypes:contadinoan Italian farmeragriculturalist, agriculturist, cultivator, grower, raisersomeone concerned with the science or art or business of cultivating the soilranchera person who owns or operates a ranchsmallholdera person owning or renting a smallholdingsmall farmera farmer on a small farmsowersomeone who sowstenant farmera farmer who works land owned by someone elsetillersomeone who tills land (prepares the soil for the planting of crops)crofteran owner or tenant of a small farm in Great Britainfruit growersomeone who grows fruit commerciallygraziera rancher who grazes cattle or sheep for marketsheepmana man who raises (or tends) sheepviticulturista cultivator of grape vinetype of:creatora person who grows or makes or invents things
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