 Agriculture
 Industry
Overview
The agriculture, forestry, and fishing industry plays a vital role in
our economy and our lives. It supplies us and many other countries with
a wide variety of food products and non-food products such as fibers,
lumber, and nursery items. It contributes positively to our foreign
trade balance and it remains one of the Nation's larger industries in
terms of total employment. However, technology continues to enable us to
produce more of these products with fewer workers, even in the face of
stagnant prices for output, resulting in fewer farms and farmworkers.
 The
agriculture sector of this industry is divided into two major segments,
animal production and crop production. Animal production includes
establishments that raise livestock, such as beef cattle, sheep, and
hogs; dairy farms; poultry and egg farms; and animal specialty farms,
such as apiaries (bee farms) and aquaculture (fish farms). Crop
production includes the growing of grains, such as wheat, corn, and
barley; field crops, such as cotton and tobacco; vegetables and melons;
fruits and nuts; and horticultural specialties, such as flowers and
ornamental plants.
 The
agriculture, forestry, and fishing industry also includes companies that
provide support activities to this industry. On farms that primarily
grow crops, these activities may include, farm management services, soil
preparation, planting and cultivating services, as well as crop
harvesting and post-harvesting services. Other support services
companies provide aerial dusting and spraying of pesticides over a large
number of acres. They may also perform post-harvesting tasks to prepare
crops for market, including shelling, fumigating, cleaning, grading,
grinding, and packaging agricultural products.
Establishments that supply support activities for animal production
perform services that may include breeding, pedigree record services,
boarding horses, livestock spraying, and sheep dipping and shearing.
The agriculture,
forestry, and fishing industry is being transformed by the
implementation of science and technology in almost every phase of the
agricultural process. From the planting of bioengineered crops to the
use of GPS in planting and harvesting and the latest in the science of
genetics to reproduce animals with specific characteristics, the
agriculture industry is rapidly changing.
Working
Environment
Agriculture, forestry, and fishing attract people who enjoy working with
animals, living an independent lifestyle, or working outdoors on the
land. For some, however, there may be office or laboratory environments
- or a mixture of the two.
Employment
 IIn
2006, agriculture, forestry, and fishing employed a total of 1.2 million
wage and salary workers plus an additional 919,000 self-employed and
unpaid family workers, making it one of the largest industries in the
Nation. Over 80 percent of employment is in crop production and animal
production. Most establishments in agriculture, forestry, and fishing
are very small. Nearly 60 percent employ fewer than 4 workers. Overall,
this industry sector is also unusual in that self-employed and unpaid
family workers account for such a high proportion of its workforce.
Workers in agriculture, forestry, and fishing tend to be older than
workers in other industries. In 2006, 32 percent of workers were aged 55
or older, compared with 17 percent of all workers in all industries.
Among all workers in the agriculture, forestry and fishing
industry, more than 1.1 million were wage and salary workers, while
slightly less than 1 million were self-employed and unpaid family
workers. While many of these individuals are farm owners and
workers, individuals with degrees in science, computing, and engineering
may find themselves working in this industry. For example, software
engineers have been involved in developing software specific to the
needs of overseeing a farming operation, and a biologist may be involved
in breeding operations at fisheries, as just one example.
 Industry
Forecast
Employment in the agriculture, forestry, and fishing is projected to
decline 8 percent over the 2006-2016 period. Rising costs, greater
productivity, increasing urbanization, and greater imports of food,
lumber and fish will cause many workers to leave this industry. In
addition, fishers face growing restrictions on where they can fish and
how much they can harvest because many fisheries, or fish habitats, have
been depleted because of years of overfishing.
Market pressures on the family farm will continue to drive consolidation
in the industry, as the more prosperous farms become bigger in order to
achieve greater economies of scale, along with a greater portion of farm
subsidies. In addition, increasing productivity overall means that it
takes less farm labor to produce crops and livestock than in the past.
For many farmers, the low prices for many agricultural goods have not
kept up with the increasing costs of farming. For those who need to make
a living from their farm, these conditions make it difficult for many
small farmers to survive.
Employment declines in agriculture, forestry, and fishing, however, are
being moderated by other changes taking place in agriculture. Improved
prospects for agriculture might be coming from the demand for ethanol.
Higher prices for raw petroleum will make the use of this home-grown
fuel more economically viable. Ethanol is currently made from corn, and
rapid growth in demand for ethanol has led to higher prices for this key
grain, improving the income of corn producers and providing incentive
for producers of other crops to shift more acreage to corn.
 New
developments in the marketing of milk and other agricultural produce
through farmer-owned and -operated cooperatives hold promise for some
dairy and other farms. Furthermore, demand continues to rise for organic
farm produce--grown to a large extent on small to medium-sized farms. The
production of crops without the use of pesticides and certain chemicals
is allowing farms of small acreage to remain economically viable. Also,
some Federal, State, and local government programs provide assistance
targeted at small farms. For example, some programs allow farmers to
sell the development rights to their property to nonprofit organizations
pledged to preserving green space. This immediately lowers the market
value of the land--and the property taxes levied on it--making farming
more affordable.
Employment in aquaculture had been growing steadily in recent years in
response to growth in the demand for fish. However, competition from
imported farm-raised fish and unsettled regulatory concerns about
environmental impacts of fish farms is slowing the growth of
aquaculture.
In fishing, increases in imports and efforts to revive many fisheries
through stringent limits on fishing activity will continue to lead to
employment declines. In certain areas of the country, such as Alaska,
prudent management has sustained healthy fisheries that should continue
to harvest massive amounts of fish. In other areas, fisheries have been
damaged by coastal pollution and depleted by years of overfishing. In
these areas there will be fewer jobs for fishers.
 The
logging subsector also is projected to decline as domestic timber
producers continue to face increasing competition from foreign producers
who can harvest the same amount of timber at lower cost. As competition
increases, the logging industry is expected to continue to consolidate
in order to reduce costs, eliminating some jobs. Additionally, increased
mechanization of logging operations and improvements in logging
equipment will continue to depress demand for many manual timber-cutting
and logging workers.
The forestry subsector is also projected to show a decline in wage and
salary workers as owners of forested lands are expected to hire fewer
people to plant and raise timber stands as landowners find other uses
for their lands more profitable. Professionals in the forestry industry
will likely turn to self employment as consultants.
Related
Degree Fields
Professional
Associations
Note: Some resources in this section are provided by the US Department
of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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