Share of US labor force working in agriculture:
1840: 64%
1880: 43%
1920: 27%
1960: 10%
2000: 1.5%
What an amazing transformation over 160 years.
Interesting to compare the USA’s numbers with these statistics from the CIA’s World Factbook on percentages of people employed in agriculture around the world, e.g., Afghanistan 78%, Kyrgyzstan 48%, Malaysia 13%, New Zealand 7%, Singapore 0.1%.
And yet, the USA is still a major exporter of agricultural products — often to countries with much higher percentages of the population in agriculture. So much for the need for small farms (and small farm programs and subsidies) as the supposed backbone of the country.