🔍 Read the full analysis: When Almost Everyone Farmed: Understanding Work In The AI Era on ThorstenMeyerAI.com
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TL;DR
A November 3 article on ThorstenMeyerAI.com uses agriculture’s long decline in employment share to examine how technology can reshape work. It reports that about 1.5% of U.S. workers are now in agriculture, while roughly 928 million people worldwide still work in the sector; the author’s suggestion that AI could automate up to 90% of a sector is explicitly a thesis, not an established forecast.
Thorsten Meyer published the second installment of his Work After Work series on November 3, using agriculture’s transformation to examine how technology may change employment in the AI era. The article says farming’s share of the U.S. workforce fell from an estimated 73.7% in 1800 to about 1.5% today, while stressing that this shift unfolded over roughly two centuries rather than in a sudden wave of automation.
The article draws on historical estimates published by the U.S. Census Bureau: in 1800, about 1.4 million of 1.9 million U.S. workers were in agriculture. The series includes enslaved people in its labor-force count, and figures before 1840 are estimates rather than census totals. Meyer says “about three in four” is a more responsible summary than treating the estimate as exact. The 1810 estimate was higher, at 83.7%.
The account describes change as a sequence of advances in farm tools, crop science and fertilizer. It cites John Deere’s 1837 steel plough, which shed sticky soil more readily than earlier ploughs, and the mid-1960s spread of short-straw wheat associated with plant breeder Norman Borlaug. Indian statistics cited in the article show wheat output rising from 12.3 million tonnes in 1964-65 to 26.4 million tonnes in 1971-72. The comparison uses 1964-65, rather than the drought-affected 1965-66 harvest, as its starting point.
The article also points to Fritz Haber’s 1908 patent for synthesizing ammonia, a process that enabled industrial nitrogen fertilizer production. It argues that farm employment’s share could fall before the number of farm workers did: the U.S. farm-worker count continued to grow until about 1910, reaching 11.8 million. For the present, it cites an International Labour Organization estimate that about 928 million people worked in agriculture in 2025, around one in four workers worldwide. The reported share varies sharply by country: about 43% in India, 1.5% in the U.S. and 1% in Germany.
What Farming’s Shift Says About AI
Agriculture offers a historical example of a sector producing far more with a much smaller share of workers. Meyer says global cereal harvests increased 4.2-fold from 1961, while the world’s population grew 2.7-fold over the same period. The article also reports that U.S. farm output in 2023 was nearly three times its 1948 level, with only a small increase in total inputs. Those figures challenge the assumption that fewer workers in a sector must mean less of its output.
For readers weighing AI’s labor effects, the parallel is useful but limited. The farming example shows that technology can raise productivity and shift workers into other kinds of work over time. It does not establish how quickly AI will spread, which occupations it will affect, or whether displaced workers will find comparable jobs. The article’s proposal that automation could reach as much as 90% of a sector within a decade or a few decades is Meyer’s thesis, not a measured result or a settled forecast.
The long timeline matters to businesses and workers. Farm tools, improved seeds and fertilizer arrived at different points and interacted with one another; the workforce did not disappear in response to a single invention. The history therefore offers a reason to examine both productivity and employment over time, rather than treating a technology announcement as proof of immediate job losses.
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A Long, Uneven Move Off Farms
The article compares the U.S. experience with estimates from other countries and periods. It cites economic historians’ reconstruction that roughly 85% of Japan’s gainfully occupied population worked in the primary sector in 1872, a category that included farming, forestry and fishing. In China, the official series beginning in 1952 recorded 83.5% of employed people in the primary sector; India’s 1951 census counted cultivators and agricultural laborers as 69.7% of workers.
Germany’s figures illustrate that the change was neither immediate nor uniform. An 1882 occupational census put agriculture and forestry at 43.4% of the workforce, though the source says the count underrepresented women working on family farms. Between 1882 and 1939, the agricultural share fell from 43% to 25%, while the number of farm workers remained between 8 million and 10 million. The differing historical sources and definitions mean these figures are comparisons, not perfectly aligned measures across countries.
Meyer’s series first divided work into field, factory and office; this installment focuses on the field. The article’s central historical point is that people did not stop needing food as fewer of them farmed. Instead, productivity gains allowed a smaller share of workers to produce more food, while the economy and the kinds of jobs available changed over generations.
“The share fell long before the headcount.”
— Thorsten Meyer, article author
Limits of the AI Comparison
The article documents historical agricultural changes, but it does not provide evidence that AI will reduce employment in any particular sector by a specific amount. The suggested possibility of automation reaching up to 90% of a sector is the author’s thesis; its definition of a sector, method and supporting forecast are not established in the supplied article text.
Some historical numbers are estimates or reconstructions, not direct counts. Early U.S. figures precede regular census data, Japan’s 1872 figure is a reconstruction, and the country comparisons use different dates and categories. The German census also may have missed women’s farm work. The source material does not establish where workers leaving agriculture went in each country or how the gains and costs were distributed among workers and employers.
The article’s output comparisons also require care: higher harvests and farm output show production growth, but by themselves they do not explain every cause, measure food access, or prove that workers displaced from farming benefited equally. How AI will affect job numbers, wages, working conditions and the pace of change remains unclear.
The Series Turns to Factory Work
Meyer identifies this installment as Episode 2 of Work After Work, following an earlier episode that divided the economy into field, factory and office. The article says Episode 3 will cover mechanical reapers, threshers and tractors, adding more detail to the history of farm technology and work.
For the broader AI question, the next developments to watch are evidence of actual workplace adoption and measured changes in tasks, hiring and output. The article does not set a date or provide a test for its proposed 90% automation scenario, so that figure should be treated as an argument to examine rather than a scheduled or confirmed outcome.
Key Questions
What is the news development?
Thorsten Meyer published Episode 2 of his Work After Work series on November 3, 2026. It uses agriculture’s historical decline as a share of employment to discuss possible changes to work in the AI era.
How much of the U.S. workforce farmed in 1800?
The article cites a Census Bureau-published historical estimate that 73.7% of the U.S. labor force worked in agriculture in 1800. The figure is an estimate, not a census count, and includes enslaved people in the labor-force total.
How many people work in agriculture worldwide today?
The article cites an ILO estimate of 928 million agricultural workers in 2025, or about one in four workers worldwide. It reports substantially different workforce shares across countries, including about 43% in India and 1.5% in the United States.
Does the article predict that AI will automate 90% of jobs?
No. Meyer says automation could become a sector of up to 90% within a decade or a few decades, but labels this his thesis, not a fact. The article does not establish that AI will automate 90% of jobs or provide a confirmed forecast for when that might happen.
Did fewer farmers lead to less food?
The article argues that the historical record shows the opposite in aggregate: it cites global cereal production growing 4.2-fold from 1961 as population grew 2.7-fold. That comparison describes output and population growth; it does not by itself explain food access or how gains were shared.
Source: ThorstenMeyerAI.com
