如果要用短短几句话描述为啥当农民很苦，还得用英语，今天看到了这段很有力量的文字：

Being a peasant sucks. It sucked then and it sucks now. Trapped, in an infernal machine designed to keep you anchored within 7 kilometers of the room in which you were born.
You live in the same crumbling leaking house that half your extended family has lived in for over a century, marry who you are told to marry, learn only what the local preacher tells you to learn-- and nothing else.

翻译一下：

当农民苦，过去苦，现在也苦。束缚在一个永无天日的体系里，从出生就锚定在方圆15里路的天地里；一家子和乱七八糟的表亲挤在同一个又破又漏的祖屋里几十年，在当地村小混个也不知道有什么用的毕业证，服从长辈的意愿找对象结婚——就这样过完了一辈子。

大山的引力，盐碱地的苦根。