[tt] farming second to services after 10 kYrs

[Eugen Leitl]

http://petersmagnusson.com/2007/09/04/for-the-first-time-in-10000-years-farming-is-not-the-dominating-industry/

For the first time in 10,000 years, farming is not the dominating industry

Living in a post-industrial society - perhaps even post-information society -
it’s easy to lose perspective sometimes. Today’s wire from Reuters about the
ILO’s Key Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM) was widely reported,
including the New York Times coverage where I first read it.

The business and mainstream press focus on our own economic competitiveness
vis-a-vis China and Europe. E.g. NYT opens their reporting with “American
workers are the world’s most productive, followed by the Irish, though
productivity is rising fastest in China and much of the rest of Asia,
according to the International Labor Organization.” Wall Street Journal leads
with “U.S. workers continue to lead the world in productivity, though many
East Asian economies are quickly advancing, according to a new report by the
International Labour Organization.”

They go on to note various interesting details, for example if you take into
account the number of hours worked, the US falls to second after Norway
(Americans are noted for working many hours). More significantly, the
productivity head start that the west has over large China and East Asian
economies is shrinking; output per worker grew to one-fifth that of an
industrialized worker, from one-eight ten years ago, a dramatic improvement.
The economic growth in Asia led to the number of working poor falling by
half, though in south-Saharan Africa it is getting worse. World unemployment
fell fro 6.4% to 6.3%.

By and large the report shows some serious progress in the world economy,
coupled with some regional setbacks. But there was a small item about farming
that prompted me to dig up the actual KILM report and look through it.

Here’s what the report writes (in Box 4b on page 6 of KILM04):

    In recent years agriculture has lost its place as the main sector of
employment and has been replaced by the services sector, which in 2006
constituted 42.0 per cent of world employment compared to 36.1 per cent for
agriculture. As for the industry sector, it represented 21.9 per cent of
total employment, which is almost unchanged from ten years ago. Although
textbook theory suggests that economic development entails a structural
transformation with a shift away from agriculture to the industry sector,
this no longer seems to be reflected in reality. Instead of moving into
high-productivity jobs in the industry sector, people are moving directly
into the services sector, which consists of both high- and low-productivity
jobs.

    Therefore, it is unclear if the sectoral shift goes hand in hand with
productivity increases and thereby a better utilization of the workforce.
Agriculture is still the main sector of employment in the world’s poorest
regions. Two-thirds of workers in sub-Saharan Africa and almost half of
workers in South Asia and South-East Asia & the Pacific are in agriculture.

So, firstly, modernization of large economies is largely bypassing
industrialization and going straight for service industries - in our western
economies the service sector was about two-thirds of the economy, and has
grown further (to 71.2%). But the so large parts of the world economy are
moving straight to service industries that their roles have changed.
Worldwide, in 1996 agriculture employed 42%, industry 21%, and services 37%.
In 2006, the numbers are 36%, 22%, and 42%. So in the period, services has
overtaken farming on a global scale.

To me this stuck out as the news of the day. This is a tremendous milestone.
In the west we’re accustomed to the farming sector being 4-6% or so, but that
certaintly not true in most of the word. You might think the industrial
revolution was a long time ago, but the reality is that more people have
continued to work in farming. Until sometime in these past few years that is.

And thus passes a tremendous milestone in the history of our species.
Farming, invented around 8000 BC, quickly dominated human activity and has so
continued to for the following 10,000 years (give or take a few). And we even
find that the tradition agriculture->industry->services transition doesn’t
hold up globally. The industry segment simply isn’t big enough, so many
workers skip to services.

So despite what they tell you at coffee tomorrow about the adoption rates
your marketing people expect for your product, you might want to point out
the longest paradigm shift of all time; farming handed over the crown to the
service sector only last year or thereabouts.