http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/fashion/16farmer.html
"Better" to whom, and by which standards?
Somebody: Hey, those guys are cute. I like how it's in the Style and Fashion section. Middle-class American hipsters starting up organic farms doesn't really compare well to subsistence farmers in Cambodia.
Anyway, defending the legitimacy of the peasant lifestyle is pretty much like standing up for medieval guilds at this point. Over half the world lives in cities today, and millions of peasants are fleeing the land each year. The biggest migration in world history is happening right now in China. Remember that old debate about whether peasants could lead a revolution or not, and then once it appeared that they could, which types were revolutionary and which were not? It's irrelevant now, because there won't be enough of them in the future to guerrilla campaign their way to power.