Agriculture as a knowledge intensive activity

I have often complained about the overly simplistic framework of economic "advancement" that is generally used - that is agriculture was replaced by manufacturing which is being replaced by services. Here is an example from Simon Johnson, the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. When asked repeatedly about the erosion of manufacturing on the Wall Street Journal Economix blog, his answer was don't worry about manufacturing:

Economic development involves moving from agriculture into manufacturing and, later, from manufacturing into services.

I don't mean to pick on Mr. Johnson, this is the standard economic orthodoxy. It is also incredibly misguided.

The actual change was much more dramatic and interesting. Manufacturing did not replace/eliminate agriculture; it transformed it. Agriculture, like every other economic activity, became mechanized and industrialized. At the same time "services" also become mechanized and industrialized.

Now, information and knowledge (often grossly lumped in as "services") is transforming economic activity, such as those we now referred to as agriculture and manufacturing. That transformation in agriculture to a more knowledge and information intensive activity is illustrated in two stories in the most recent edition of the Economist.

The article Harvest moon describes the use of satellites:

For farmers, working out the optimal amount of seed, fertiliser, pesticide and water to scatter on a field can make, or break, the subsequent harvest. Regular laboratory analyses of soil and plant samples from various parts of the field can help--but such expertise is costly, and often unavailable. A new and cheaper method of doing this analysis, though, is now on offer. Precise prescriptions for growing crops can be obtained quickly, and less expensively, by measuring electromagnetic radiation reflected from farmland. The data are collected by orbiting satellites.

The second article Nanobiotechnology: Seeding the seedsis about fertilizer:

Manure, compost and ash were used as fertilisers for centuries before the 1800s, but people did not understand how they worked until the science of chemistry was developed in the 19th century and it became clear that they supply plants with nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Today, something similar may be happening with a different sort of fertiliser altogether. For reasons that are not yet entirely clear, it looks as though exposing seeds to carbon nanotubes before they germinate makes the seedlings that subsequently sprout grow faster and larger.

In exactly the same manner, manufacturing is becoming a knowledge intensive activity.

So keep in mind those farm watching satellites and nanotube fertilizers when some one describes agriculture or manufacturing as sectors of the past. They obviously don't yet understand.