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This looks like a duplicate but it's not. Here is the 2013 question:

In farms or on farms? The OP only wanted to know which sentence was grammatically correct.

  1. They live the quiet life on farms
  2. They live the quiet life in farms

Instead I would like to know why we say “on a farm” and not “in a farm”

I was teaching English to a small group of Italian kids this morning, and we were playing "Guess which animal am I". While it was easy enough to get them to say

Do you live in a jungle?
Do you live in a house?
Do you live in the water?
Do you live in a tree?
Do you live in a garden?

For one kid the question

Do you live on a farm?

proved to be quite a battle, so I pretended to be deaf when he asked Do you live in a farm? until he got the phrase exactly right.

However, it would be neat if I could provide an easy explanation or mnemonic for these kids to remember, apart from me acting decrepit and deaf again next week. Any ideas?

Please, no comments on my being pedantic and fiscal, I know it's not the end of civilization as we know it, if a learner says I live in a farm but the preposition on is used in this case, and parents pay me to teach their kids!

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Mari-Lou A
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    Normal US usage would be "on a farm". "In a farm" simply sounds wrong. Not so much a matter of semantics (though there are fine-grained differences) as common usage. – Hot Licks Apr 11 '15 at 12:41
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    It gets even more confusing. You live in the mountains (plural), but you live on a mountain (singular). (Unless you are actually living inside the mountain, like a villain's secret base in a James Bond movie.) – Peter Shor Apr 11 '15 at 12:44
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    I would only use in a farm when I pictured the farm as an enclosing structure; that has its applications, but normally I envision a farm as a large, open, and two dimensional area. That is: a surface. So I'm on it. This comment thread on a related question may help clarify what I mean by giving other geographic and spatial examples. It's worth reading each of the comments under that answer for a fuller exposition. – Dan Bron Apr 11 '15 at 12:48
  • @DanBron so why do we ask: Do you live in a garden? And not on? I need something simple for these 8 year-olds. – Mari-Lou A Apr 11 '15 at 12:50
  • (Also, I don't get the comments about downvoting and voting to close. This is a perfectly legitimate and interesting question, and should remain open, unless someone can dig up a dupe which has satisfactory answers. Otherwise, this very question may attract the long-sought canonical answer about the prepositions on vs in which would help so many people learning English who struggle with the difference.) – Dan Bron Apr 11 '15 at 12:52
  • @DanBron no one has mentioned this question being closed, I was just anticipating possibe opposition. (i.e. see Kriss) – Mari-Lou A Apr 11 '15 at 12:54
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    @Mari-LouA Because a garden is enclosed. Because trees and jungles are three dimensional and have volume with well defined vertical boundaries. In some sense, all the ins have walls, which seems it might be easy enough to explain to kids. I expanded on this a bit in the comment thread I just referenced. See the continent vs galaxy example. You might want to skip the topology jargon with your 8-year-olds, however ;) – Dan Bron Apr 11 '15 at 12:55
  • @DanBron “I live in the countryside” OR “I live on the countryside”? (I just deleted jungle and tree when I realized myself that these environments are three dimensional. Sorry, if that makes your comment look a bit weird!) – Mari-Lou A Apr 11 '15 at 12:57
  • When the countryside is envisioned as a surface, it's on: the sunlight lay across the fallow countryside like a streak of butter on toast. When the countryside is envisioned as a container with boundaries (separated from the urban or developed areas, e.g.), it's in. Now certainly we will be able to find exceptions in this gloriously, riotously inconsistent language of ours (which, sadly for your students, will have to be memorized separately), but that doesn't invalidated the general rule. – Dan Bron Apr 11 '15 at 13:01
  • Perhaps 'on a ranch / cattle station', where the polysemy (lands ... farmhouse) is perhaps more densely concentrated around the land/s end of the spectrum, feels easier to accept. – Edwin Ashworth Apr 11 '15 at 13:09
  • @Mari-Lou A I have always been trying to follow your answers as deeply wrought and unconventional, allowing to twig it. For me as a non-native speaker it is the question of "at" or "on" that brings up real difficulties. And hereupon it's the issue of the priority of action or location. We've been taught that "at" infers that some activity is of the prior importance, not location. "I work at the farm" would mean to me that the farm is a facility where some farming activity is taken up and I am in this activity. – Eugene Dec 03 '23 at 16:33
  • "I work on the farm" - I can work there as a plumber, usher, entertainer etc. (it's not related to the farming activity). What is the real, intrinsic difference as to "I work at the post-office (mills, airport, restaurant, office, university, bank etc) - I work in the post-office (mills, airport, restaurant, office, university, bank etc)"? Is it that that I've mentioned? – Eugene Dec 03 '23 at 16:45
  • And as to your question, to me it doesn't seem as simple as just a matter of dimensions because the farm is three-dimensional. There can be corn grown which can be higher than some trees in the garden. The kernel lies somewhere else. It might be that of activity vs location in your question, i.e. on some surface where one works - the farm, the plant. The word "garden" doesn't allude to some sort of work, by itself. One usually saunters within its borders or indulges in gardening there as his/ her hobby. How do you think, can it be true? And can it be said: "He lives at his uncle's farm"? – Eugene Dec 03 '23 at 20:28

2 Answers2

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I haven't done any research in vetted sources for this answer, but here's how I approach it at low levels with my students. The following is a rule of thumb.

We use in to denote being within spaces that we perceive as being three-dimensional. Jungles, houses, trees and water are things which when we're in them surround us on all sides in a three dimensional way. Notice that in the Original Poster's examples, this applies to animals that live in the water. It isn't really true of humans - who might live on the water.

We also use in to describe being confined in a delineated two dimension area. For example, in a cell in your database or in a field or in London, in England and so forth. This, I think, is the reason for in a garden in the Original Poster's examples.

We use on to denote being on a surface or plane of some description:

  • on the wall
  • on the table
  • on your face
  • on the earth

This is especially true when we think of this surface or plane as extending out indefinitely or over some great distance:

  • on the beach
  • on the plains of Africa
  • on the open seas

It seems that in English, we view farms, ranches and the like as planes that extend outwards as opposed to as clearly defined two dimensional areas. (Compare with a garden or a field). Notice that with some words it just depends how we're thinking about them that determines whether we use in or on, for example with the word water. Also, sometimes we can just choose whether to use in or on because we can think about something as being either a delineated area or a plane:

  • in college grounds
  • on college grounds
Araucaria - Him
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"On land" definitely emphasizes living on and above the surface of land/ground.

"In land/ground" emphasizes living inside the ground, under the surface of land/ground, like some mites do:

Insects and Mites of Western North America: A Manual and ... - Page 537

Edward Oliver Essig - 1958 The larvae live in ground and rock pools, brackish water, and salt marshes.

Now, a farm is flat and resides on the flatness of land, on land. Using "on" in connection with "living" accentuates living/being above ground. It also accentuates being out in free air most of the time, to work the land, and not hiding inside the houses and barns.

One can use in special circumstances "live in a farm," as Terry Pratchett (R.I.P.) and his coauthor say here:

The Folklore of Discworld - Page 88 Terry Pratchett, ‎Jacqueline Simpson - 2010

There was even one type, the house-elves, whom humans welcomed. The English called them hobs, pixies or pucks, the Scots brownies, the Scandinavians nisses and tomtes. These would actually live in a farm and bring it luck; they would

to accentuate that these house-elves had for their /main place the existence/base/abode/ the inside of the houses and barns belonging to a farm, houses that were on a farm, and not in a farm, as the statistics show

"houses on a farm" About 7,350 results

"houses in a farm" 3 results

again because they are seen to be built on the surface of land belonging to a farm.

Marius Hancu
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  • The problem is that with these kids, I'm going to get the smart alec who pipes up: But Miss Marilou, a garden is flat, and also it is land! But, yes, on for surfaces is good. – Mari-Lou A Apr 11 '15 at 13:08
  • @Mari-LouA - Just put on your best mom face and say "Because I said so." Not everything in English is perfectly logical. (In fact, one is often hard-pressed to fine anything that's logical.) – Hot Licks Apr 11 '15 at 13:24