Farming loses dominance for first time in 10,000 years

September 7th, 02007 by Alexander Rose - Twitter: @zander

Peter Magnussen wrote an excellent blog piece on the most recent International Labour Organization report that shows that for first time in 10,000 years, farming is no longer the dominant industry on the planet.

And thus passes a tremendous milestone in the history of our species. Farming, invented around 8000 BC, quickly dominated human activity and has continued to for some 10,000 years. And we even find that the agriculture->industry->services transition doesn’t hold up globally. The industry segment simply isn’t big enough, so increasingly workers go directly from farming to services.

(Thanks to Ed Sisson for bringing this to my attention)

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 02007 at 8:10 am and is filed under Long Term Thinking.

http://microclesia.com John L

Not sure about the metrics on the ILO study. Around the turn of the century (1900), approximately 75% of the U.S. population was involved with farming in one sense or another. Today, that number is roughly 2%. Seems like, as a percentage of labor, farming hasn’t been the “dominant” industry for some time – at least not in the West.

We have realized a vast increase in efficiency via the use of fossil fuels – largely via the Green Revolution that started in the 1950s. This underscores a dilemma – we rely on cheap, abundant energy to feed 2-3 billion people, but energy is becoming scarce and more expensive.

There will come a point in the near future when energy becomes a limiting factor, the social asymtote, behind all economies – food, water, travel – eventually effecting population growth.

Farming loses dominance for first time in 10,000 years

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