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Comment by hasenj | Hacker News Reader

> Greater than 90% of the population had to be farmers, because if that wasn't the case the people would starve

That's quite a bold statement. Do you have a source to back it up?

If that was the case, there wouldn't be such a thing as a city or a civilization.

From what I understand, most people in Europe were peasants because the ruling class wouldn't let them be anything else, not because it was the only sustainable choice economically.

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Do you have a source to back it up?

1790: US Total population: 3,929,214; farmers 90% of labor force.

1840: Total US population: 17,069,453; farm population; 9,012,000 (est.); farmers 69% of labor force

http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm

That's only in the US,this doesn't prove it was a global phenomenon.

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/bg146?pg=3

That took too long to find. The data backing that up is also available in Global shift by Peter Dicken http://amzn.to/avt5eU

I didn't think the statement was bold at all, but granted I was a TA for a course on Global Food & Hunger.

I think you are thinking about serfdom - which ended at different times (15th Century or so for what is now the UK) and a recently as 1861 in places like Russia.

> Do you have a source to back it up?

It seems unreasonable to expect others to provide sources when you don't source your own information.

I'm not the one who came up with an outrageous claim.

It's pretty much at the level of common knowledge that for most of human history, the primary human occupation was food production.

"Before the industrial revolution" is only like 150 years (or so) ago.

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