Machinery made farmers more efficient and now there are more farmers than ever.

Pre industrial revolution something like 80+ percent of the population was involved in agriculture. I question the assertion of more farmers now especially since an ever growing percentage of farms are not even owned by corporeal entities never mind actual farmers.

ooohhh I think I missed the intent of the statement... well done!

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herval 2 hours ago | parent [-]

80% of the world population back then is less than 50% of the current number of people working in farming, so the assertion isn’t wrong, even if fewer people are working on farming proportionally (as it should be, as more complex, desirable and higher paid options exist)

	▲	djhn 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You might be underestimating complexity and pay. What is and isn’t desirable, and to whom, is also complicated.

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asdff 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The machinery replaced a lot of low skill labor. But in its wake modern agriculture is now dependent on high skill labor. There are probably more engineers, geologists, climatologists, biologists, chemists, veterinarians, lawyers, and statisticians working in the agriculture sector today than there ever were previously.

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m3047 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes: farmers.

	▲	defrost 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed. And overall fewer farmers with more technological skill sets than back in the dustbowl days. Here (Western Australia) the increase in average farm size by product can be plotted over time along with the fall in numbers working that land.

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felipeerias 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If AI tools make expert developers a lot more productive on large software projects, while empowering non-developers to create their own little programs and automations, I am not sure how that would increase the number of people with “software developer” as their full-time job.

	▲	techblueberry 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Because you would create lots more large software projects, how that it’s cheaper to do so.

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fatherwavelet 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think the better example is the mechanization of the loom created a huge amount of jobs in factories relative to the hand loom because the demand for clothing could not be met by the hand loom.

The craftsman who were forced to go to the factory were not paid more or better off.

There is not going to be more software engineers in the future than there is now, at least not in what would be recognizable as software engineering today. I could see there being vastly more startups with founders as agent orchestrators and many more CTO jobs. There is no way there is many more 2026 version of software engineering jobs at S&P 500 companies in the future. That seems borderline delusional to me.

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wordpad 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Machinery and scale efficiencies made cost of entry higher than ever though

That's not the case for IT where entry barrier has been reduced to nothing.

	▲	4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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teaearlgraycold 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There’s only so much land and only so much food we need to eat. The bounds on what software we need are much wider. But certainly there is a limit there as well.

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falloutx 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wait what? There are way less farmers than we had in the past. In many parts of the world, every member of the family was working on the farm, and now only 1 person can do the work of 5-10 people.

	▲	DoctorOetker 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		the comment was obviously intended to make you think: yes there are fewer human farmers, and more mechanical ones.

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victorbjorklund 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is this sarcasm?