🔍 Read the full analysis: Almost Everyone Farmed: Then Came A New Way To Work on ThorstenMeyerAI.com
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TL;DR
A ThorstenMeyerAI.com report published Nov. 3 traces how agriculture’s share of the U.S. workforce fell from an estimated 73.7% in 1800 to about 1.5% today. It attributes the change to a long sequence of tools, fertilizers and improved crops, while stressing that farming’s transformation took generations and that 928 million people still work in agriculture worldwide.
A report published Nov. 3 by ThorstenMeyerAI.com traces how farming went from employing an estimated 73.7% of U.S. workers in 1800 to about 1.5% today, as tools, fertilizer and improved crops helped increase output. The account uses agriculture as a historical case study of how a sector can shed most of its workforce over a long period, while emphasizing that the process took roughly two centuries in the United States and is far from complete worldwide.
The 1800 U.S. estimate comes from economic historian Stanley Lebergott’s labor-force series, published by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1975. It counts about 1.4 million agricultural workers in a labor force of 1.9 million people aged 10 and older. The report cautions that figures before 1840 are estimates rather than census counts. The series also includes about 530,000 enslaved people, whose labor was coerced; the article’s description of the period notes that enslaved people were among those made to work in agriculture.
The change came through several developments, not one machine. The report points to a steel plough developed by John Deere in 1837, the industrial production of ammonia fertilizer after Fritz Haber’s 1908 patent, and shorter-stalk wheat varieties introduced in India and Pakistan in the 1960s. It says India’s wheat harvest rose from 12.3 million tonnes in 1964–65 to 26.4 million tonnes in 1971–72, citing official statistics.
Despite the falling share of workers in farming, the number of U.S. farm workers continued to rise until about 1910, when the report gives a figure of 11.8 million. The report also says global cereal production grew 4.2-fold from 1961 while the world population grew 2.7-fold. It cites an International Labour Organization estimate that 928 million people worked in agriculture in 2025, about one in four workers worldwide.
How Farm Productivity Changed Work
The figures challenge the assumption that fewer farmers must mean less food. The report says the world’s cereal harvest grew faster than its population between 1961 and the period covered by its comparison. In the United States, farm output in 2023 was nearly three times its 1948 level, according to the report, despite only a small rise in total inputs. These comparisons suggest that productivity gains can allow a smaller share of workers to produce more food.
That history matters to people considering how technology may affect other kinds of work. Agriculture shows that a workforce shift can unfold gradually: the share of workers in a sector may fall well before its headcount does, and workers do not necessarily move directly from farms into one new occupation. The report argues that the experience is relevant to businesses and workers as they consider automation. Its projection that automation could eventually affect as much as 90% of a sector is the author’s thesis, not a measured forecast or established fact.
The effects also depend on place and time. The report puts agriculture at about 43% of workers in India, compared with roughly 1.5% in the United States and 1% in Germany. Those differences show that the U.S. experience cannot be treated as a timetable every country will follow.
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The Long Shift From Fields
The report places the U.S. estimate within a broader history. Economic historians estimate that about 85% of Japan’s gainfully occupied population worked in the primary sector in 1872, a category that included farming, forestry and fishing. For Germany, a historical reconstruction puts the primary sector at 56.7% in 1849; the first official occupational count cited in the report found 43.4% in agriculture and forestry in 1882. The source warns that the 1882 count undercounted women working on family farms.
Other data points also show how widespread agricultural work remained. China’s national series began in 1952 with 83.5% of employed people in the primary sector, while India’s 1951 census recorded cultivators and agricultural laborers as 69.7% of workers. These measures are not identical: some combine farming with forestry and fishing, and the underlying sources vary between reconstructions and official counts. They provide historical comparisons, not a single standardized global series.
The report’s explanation is that farms relying mainly on human and animal muscle could produce only limited surpluses, leaving much of the population needed to grow food. Over time, improved implements, mechanization, crop science and fertilizer raised output per worker. The source says later coverage will address mechanical reapers, threshers and tractors, but this installment focuses on the longer sequence that altered agricultural productivity.
““The share fell long before the headcount.””
— Thorsten Meyer, ThorstenMeyerAI.com
Limits of the Historical Comparisons
Several figures are estimates or reconstructions rather than direct counts. The U.S. labor-force figures before 1840 are explicitly described as estimates, and the report notes that its 1800 total includes enslaved workers. International comparisons also combine different definitions and data sources, including measures of the broader primary sector rather than farming alone. Those differences limit precise country-to-country comparisons.
The report’s global figure of 928 million agricultural workers is an ILO estimate for 2025; it does not, by itself, say how many of those jobs are likely to be automated or when. Nor does the historical account establish that the same pace or effects will apply to other sectors. Meyer’s projection of automation reaching as much as 90% of a sector remains his thesis, and the article does not provide a method or independent evidence to quantify that forecast.
The source material also does not identify where displaced farm workers went in each country or give a full accounting of the social and economic costs of the shift. It describes productivity changes and workforce shares, but those figures alone cannot explain every worker’s experience.
The Series Turns to Machinery
The report is part of “Work After Work,” a series organized around how economies change as work moves among fields, factories and offices. Its next installment is described as covering mechanical reapers, threshers and tractors, extending the account of how machinery altered farm labor.
For the broader automation argument, the next useful evidence would include sector-specific data on employment, output, wages and the pace at which new systems are adopted. The report does not set out a confirmed date for automation to reach a particular share of work, and its 90% scenario should be read as a hypothesis rather than an announced milestone.
Key Questions
How many U.S. workers farmed around 1800?
Stanley Lebergott’s historical estimate puts 1.4 million of 1.9 million U.S. workers aged 10 and older in agriculture in 1800, or 73.7%. The figures before 1840 are estimates, not census counts.
How many people work in agriculture worldwide?
The report cites an International Labour Organization estimate of 928 million people in 2025, roughly one in four workers worldwide.
What changes helped reduce the need for farm labor?
The report describes a sequence that included improved ploughs and other machinery, industrial fertilizer production, and higher-yield crop varieties. It does not attribute the workforce shift to a single invention.
Does the report predict that 90% of jobs will be automated?
No. The author calls the possibility of automation reaching as much as 90% of a sector a thesis, not a fact. The report does not establish that figure as a forecast or give a confirmed timeline.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
