ABSTRACT
Agriculture—including livestock farming, forestry and fishing—is the basic human activity, on which all others depend. Until the nineteenth century the overwhelming majority of the human race were farmers. The Industrial Revolution, with its concentration of people in huge cities, beginning in England and spreading over the earth, has changed this. Yet even to-day three-fifths of the human race are in agriculture. An estimate of 1949 showed 1,285 million persons, out of a world total of 2,177 millions, as agricultural population. 13 The proportion varied widely according to regions. In North America it was only one-fifth, in Europe and Oceania one-third, in Central and South America two-thirds, in Asia 70% and in Africa 74%.
