Peak Farmer

In what year will the most farmers ever be working? We reached peak baby in 1990 and peak manufacturing employee slightly later.

Mass employment in manufacturing just isn't coming back
'I estimate global manufacturing employment to have been between 150 million and 200 million workers in 2002, with those numbers reflecting a global decline of 20-30 million manufacturing employees in 2002 compared to 1995.'

You can never tell exactly what the future will hold but with the increasing use of robots points to reduced manufacturing jobs for example "Foxconn to rely more on robots; could use 1 million in 3 years". Agricultural employment as a percentage of total employment has been declining since the industrial revolution. The percentage of Americans employed in agriculture has dropped from over 90% at the time of the American revolution to around 2% now for example.

The UN says peak rural population will be sometime between 2020-2025. "However between 2020 and 2025, the total rural population will peak and then start to decline," and "Global rural populations will peak in the 2020s, leading to mass abandonment of rural lands.(Data Source: UN Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division)". Not all rural people are farmers and I think the proportion of farmers amongst rural dwellers is decreasing. If the figures of peak rural population being sometime 2020-2025 then that means the most farmers that will ever be living will occur sometime before 2020.

The first time in human history since the agricultural revolution that most people were not employed as farmers would have been some time before urban population passed rural population. The World Population Becomes More Urban Than Rural in around 2007 so we are not long past the majority of people being farmers. 'Agriculture still accounts for about 45 per cent of the world’s labour force, or about 1.3 billion people' according to this 2007 report. Until recently most people were farmers.

The world continues to urbainse, farms continue to mechanise and population continues to rise slower than it used to. All this means that sometime before 2020 farming will become globally a declining employer. If total farming and manufacturing jobs are declining and transport jobs could do the same soon that means we will have to find new things for people to do.

This prediction of declining numbers of farmers globally sometime around 2020 is one that someone with better google foo could disprove quickly, if you can please correct me in the comments.

We have reached Peak Baby

When will we reach peak babies? In what year will the most children be born? I bet last night a shiny pint that we will reach peak babies in the next three years. That the most babies ever born will be in a year before 2015.

Now I accept that we could never actually know how many children will be born in the future. The bet will end when I present enough evidence to convince those I am betting with rather than with a proof. Demographics is regarded as one of the most predictable of social sciences but some possible future invention could drastically increase the number of babies. We could have brave new world style artificial wombs of some such that vastly increases the birth rate for example.

Hans Rosling the statitician tweeted recently.

I looked up the UN data on this here. In detailed indicators look in births and in select country look in world. The highest birth number in the world was 1985-1990
Period Births per year
1950-1955 97 769
1955-1960 102 894
1960-1965 110 280
1965-1970 118 200
1970-1975 121 715
1975-1980 120 676
1980-1985 129 088
1985-1990 137 207
1990-1995 134 960
1995-2000 132 473
2000-2005 131 644
2005-2010 134 072
2010-2015 135 775
2015-2020 135 396
2020-2025 133 800
2025-2030 132 452
2030-2035 131 991
2035-2040 132 099
2040-2045 131 926
2045-2050 131 127
2050-2055 129 904
2055-2060 128 785
2060-2065 127 998
2065-2070 127 402
2070-2075 126 725
2075-2080 125 823
2080-2085 124 775
2085-2090 123 753
2090-2095 122 837
2095-2100 121 992
Now it could all of a sudden rise up and any prediction for the future is unlikely to be as accurate as historical estimates. Still I think I win the bet.

This does not mean that population will drop. As we are living longer world population is still expected to grow. But it does mean we can say that Malthus was wrong. Human numbers will not grow exponentially barring some disaster.

Peak Oil

The world is living through a period of declining oil supplies. All attempts by politicians, capitalists and Nazis to deny this are black lies designed to dupe the sheep population.
The graph below illustrates the catastrophic reduction in oil production that has been experienced.



Without whale oil we would have nothing to power our whale oil lamps. The sudden rise in darkness levels will cause people to commit crime and lead to a rise in illegitimate children. Also without baleen, which is used for stiffening clothing, gentlemen will appear dishevelled and unattractive and so no gentleman shall be able to attract ladies of good virtue.

The only measure available to us is to ban the use of whale oil lamps by individuals and to make everyone live in giant communes in tree top settlements. If we do not ban individuals from using whale oil we will end up with drastic price rises in whale oil which will end civilisation and reduce us all to using lights made from bugs kept in jars. Whale oil has already reached (in 1855) reached $1500 a barrel, what more evidence is needed that it is time to abandon capitalism and democracy then this?