Some time ago I read a book called The Agrarian History of Western Europe, 500 - 1850, which had an interesting statistic in it along the lines of how many people were farmers before the industrial revolution. I had trouble tracking down the stat in the book this morning, but found a link that provides a small idea of the change that industrialization brought to agriculture:
This got me thinking about how much of a shit show the world is today, and how many people are basically working poor, and I wondered: how much of this can be attributed to agricultural productivity? A few hundred years ago producing or finding food was the main concern of almost every person. But today almost no one farms. Which raises the question of: how much important and high value work still exists for people in many communities? And also, cognitively, were we meant to live in a simpler world where we did simpler tasks, and didn't have to worry about the extreme financialization of the economy?
I guess what I'm proposing is that we tend to think of automation as a more recent phenomenon, but my thinking is that changes in agriculture have, ultimately, been the most disruptive to our way of life. The scale of change in the past few centuries is absolutely massive, and I'm wondering if the following is now true:
1) High value work is now very hard to come by
2) People aren't equipped to thrive in the highly mathematical world we live in now
And a lot of it boils down to the important stuff (food) being taken care of for us.
Farmers Do a Lot More than Just Drive Tractors
This summer we were given the opportunity to intern with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and throughout our experiences we have learned a lot about the agricultural industry and rural America. Today, agriculture plays a huge role in driving the rural economy and the American economy at large...
www.usda.gov
Much of the exhibit focused on the ability of American ingenuity to triumph over struggles and obstacles across sectors and throughout history--American agriculture included. One of the major changes in agriculture that the exhibit documents is technological advancement, with exhibits and examples from every era of American history. In the 1700s nearly 80% of the population were farmers but by the 1900s the number was halved to just 40% of the population. Today, the percent of American farmers in our country has decreased to less than 2%, indicating the increasing efficiency of the agricultural industry. The efficiency increase can be credited in part to the tools and resources that have become available over the years. From horses to horse power; from Eli Whitney’s cotton gin and the McCormick binder to the Fordson tractor, the country has seen substantial technological change over a short period of time.
This got me thinking about how much of a shit show the world is today, and how many people are basically working poor, and I wondered: how much of this can be attributed to agricultural productivity? A few hundred years ago producing or finding food was the main concern of almost every person. But today almost no one farms. Which raises the question of: how much important and high value work still exists for people in many communities? And also, cognitively, were we meant to live in a simpler world where we did simpler tasks, and didn't have to worry about the extreme financialization of the economy?
I guess what I'm proposing is that we tend to think of automation as a more recent phenomenon, but my thinking is that changes in agriculture have, ultimately, been the most disruptive to our way of life. The scale of change in the past few centuries is absolutely massive, and I'm wondering if the following is now true:
1) High value work is now very hard to come by
2) People aren't equipped to thrive in the highly mathematical world we live in now
And a lot of it boils down to the important stuff (food) being taken care of for us.