After 10,000 Years, Farming No Longer Dominates

Peter S. Magnusson writes "As reported widely in business and mainstream press, the ILO recently released world market employment statistics. Most outlets focused on US economic competitiveness vs. China and Europe. Few noticed the gem hidden away in the ILO report: for the first time since the invention of agriculture, farming is not the biggest sector of the global economy — services is. (Aggregate employment numbers often divide the economy into agriculture, industry, and services.) Workers are now moving directly from agriculture to services, bypassing the traditional route of manufacturing."

Comments

Nice blog to get hits, but...

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Here's the important info, from the actual report: Here (PDF)

You'll note, from this article:

Caution should be used, however, where the information refers only to employees or only to urban areas. For some years in certain countries, the sectoral information relates only to urban areas, so that little or no agricultural work is recorded. Also, there is no data culled for the vast majority of African nations, where the sector of choice would be agriculture. So, to sum it up - your blog about the rise of services vs. agriculture could only be considered partially correct, at best.

Re:To me, the really sad thing is...

[bigdavex]

That's certainly not true for grains. What are kind of crops are you thinking of?

Wilson Quarterly

Since 1900, U.S. farmers have more than tripled wheat production per acre to 40 bushels in 1997, up from 12. For corn, the gains have been even larger--127 bushels per acre in 1997 versus 28 in 1900. But in the previous century, crop yields barely improved at all. In 1800, wheat yields were 15 bushels per acre and corn yields 25 bushels per acre.

Newer Studies have contradicted your statement...

[BradySama]

In July of this year, a study (Study: Organic Farming More Efficient) was published that found that organic farming methods can produce up to 3 times more food than more 'conventional' methods... just wanted to add to the debate!

Re:To me, the really sad thing is...

[TemporalBeing]

Barring a collapse of civilization (did someone mention Huns at the door?) humankind will continue to engineer itself forward. Something "complicated" like an Indoor Farm may seem like an overkill, but it does have a lot of advantages over farmland. Not the least of which is control. We've already been engineering our crops and the soil. (Even the "organic" variety still use modern farming techniques.) Thus the next logical step is to engineer the farmland itself to better meet our needs.

Interesting concept, but you also have to think of the environmental impact. Deer and other animals do eat portions of crops or use the crops for cover. So by moving it all inside, you may save yourself the insect and animal problems, but then you leave the insect and animals to starve - thus, you have a huge environmental impact on that alone that could result in either putting a lot of animals on the endangered species list, or greatly reducing their numbers too far. (Might help to solve road-kill problems though...)

Then, of course, you have to think of the cross-pollination by some insects (e.g. bees, etc.).

Reducing the distance between the farms and the consumers could have a lot of direct benefits. One of which is being able to control and recycle the farm wastes means that open lands are cleaner and better smelling. Future city engineers may even look at ways of pumping filtered CO2 from the city's air into the crops, while pumping the resultant oxygen back to the city.

Interesting concept. You'd also have to filter out other chemicals (e.g. NO) otherwise you could pollute the crops. Interesting though...of course, you have to fix the aforementioned issues first.

Re:To me, the really sad thing is...

[mikael]

It's not too difficult to convert a garden lawn into an allotment or a greenhouse. That's what many people do in the UK. Even if they don't have a garden they can rent an allotment from the city council (much to the dismay of land developers). People were encouraged to do this during World War II. By growing their own vegetables, fuel used to transport produce from the countryside to the cities could go towards the war effort instead. Even after rationing was removed, people still insisted on growing their own food, as it tastes fresher than the produce from the supermarkets.

As an example of a shortage in food supply, you only have to look at the milk shortage the UK faces. The major supermarket chains (Tesco, Sainsbury, ...) all employ "negotiators" to keep the price of commodity items down while keeping the price of other items high. As a consequence, they drove a good many dairy farms into bankruptcy, so they bought milk on the international market instead. Now that China has announced that all children should get at least half a glass of milk a day, the international market cannot satisfy demand.

Source Sunday Times

Re:It's already being done

[jamstar7]

Pot grown inside has little chance of being discovered; the only way to be found out is by letting someone know it's being grown there.

Actually, what do you think those late night helicopter flights are for? Grow houses kick off a lotta infrared unless you insulate the hell outta your attic. And your electric bill will go through the roof if you're growing under lights. Police have gotten warrants based on electric bills:

http://www.shakopeenews.com/node/722

http://www.savagepacer.com/node/273

http://goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?t=11 412

Re:Newer Studies have contradicted your statement.

[redcane]

I have been reading "Deep Economy", and it argues the case that the larger modern farms (as most smaller ones have now consolidated or disappeared) produce more food per dollar than farms of the past, however to do this they use vast amounts of excessively cheap energy given to us by oil. They also use petroleum based fertilisers etc etc. Historical farm practices developed before mechanised farming was driven by oil and diesel produce more crops per unit of land, and are less energy intensive, simply because the farmers had to make a living off a small allotment of land, and did not have an abundant supply of energy. These days it's all about driving down costs, and this can be done by increasing the size of a farm to push down overheads. The margins are so low in that business now, there is little choice about how you think of efficiency, it has to be efficiency in terms of dollars. It's more efficient in terms of dollars to buy more land, than to hire more labour to reduce (cheap) energy costs, or to use that labour to further maximise yield. A lot of the historical farming methods also utilised free energy in forms like encouraging animals that would eat the weeds and not the crops. I doubt energy efficiency and other forms of efficiency will become a focus until there are large changes in our economic system, or legislation that ties somethings dollar value closer to it's energy input and environmental cost values. At this point it is far cheaper to just burn some extra oil, than to make your process more efficient.