The peasant community is characterised as having an internal and an external sector which enables the description of the relative importance of wage labour, self-consumption and exports in the generation of peasant incomes, and thus their degree of market integration. The quantitative results indicate that for the typical family, half of total income is monetary income and the other half is self-consumption, challenging the usual view that the peasant economy is outside the market system and is self-sufficient. -D.J.Marsden (CDS)