- #211
talk2glenn
mheslep said:talk2glenn you're missing the details of what was said. Yes obviously agricultural productivity is way up. But Cac1001 commented in terms of absolutes originally, not in terms of productivity of produce made per person:
Absolutely, too, it is complete nonsense, unless one goes so far back in time that the American population is reduced to that of modern Manhattan. Then maybe, but you aren't really saying anything of value, are you?
See here:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/April08/Features/HiredFarm.htm
In 1950, there were almost 10 million farm workers in the United States. In 2006, there were 1 million. I'm sure if I kept searching I could go farther back and see the trend continuing for quite awhile (at least the 20th century).
That's not exactly true, just as A. SuperNova said, as there are probably more people directly employed by agriculture in the US than in the entire population of the US in colonial times. Then he alluded to how the the modern farmer is dependent on other parts of society, which is also true. One can't point to X people in a society any more and say that those people alone are responsible for producing food.
This is why I avoided quoting the number of workers in the US in the agrilculture field - to address the non sequitor about "indirection contribution".
GDP, as a measure of final product, includes any intermediate value added products, and indirect energy use by sector is tracked by the government as part of environmental regulations, so these figures are widely and easily available and get around this convenient distraction.
Assume for a moment that, individual outliers aside, if you grabbed a sufficiently large group of Americans (like 1.5% of the working population, the number of people working on farms) they'd be all more or less equally productive. There'd be outliers, to be sure, both by sector and by worker, but it'd average out well. If you can accept that axiom, then you can measure the productive contribution of workers to a sector - indirects included - by looking at GDP. So I quoted it.
It is also true that workers, regardless of the industry they are working in, need some relatively fixed amount of electricity to do their jobs. Again, it varies by the exact type of work and the location, but grab a sufficiently large bunch and it'd average out well. Accept this axiom, and you can see why I quoted energy usage.
Together we get a useful picture of how much indirect contribution the American economy today makes to agriculture, and the answer is not much. Yes, even including the "fractional manhours" spent building John Deere tractors.
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