What about a few more people in farming?

One doesn't have to be an economist to realise that we value something higher that is in short supply than something that is abundant. For a long time nature was seen as unlimited, just for us to exploit as we saw fit. Up to the industrial revolution exploitation was fairly proportionate to the growing population. With the industrial revolution we expand exploitation through the application of energy and technology at a raging pace. But we can see that resources are depleted and that we need to take better care of them. At the same time our population has exploded.

Not that I think we should compare humans and trees but to put it a bit provocatively: As we have more and more people and less and less nature, we have to value nature higher and people less, or at least human labour less."Saving" nature must have priority over saving labour. A question is how we make a system of regulations and incentives to cater for that, a system that doesn't erode respect for human rights and human values?Just look at employment in the USA: 9.6 million were employed in food services (restaurants, bars, catering) and 1.5 million in food manufacturing, 15.3 million in retail, compared to just above 2 million in the agriculture sector.

This simply makes no sense. There must be something fundamentally wrong with a system that employs more people flipping hamburgers than taking care of the planet...

Table 28: US employment by sector 1998-2018

US Employment by major industry sector, 1998, 2008, and projected 2018
Industry sector	Percent distribution
	1998	2008	2018
Non-agriculture wage and salary	90.1	91.3	91.7
Goods-producing, excluding agriculture	17.3	14.2	12.9
Mining	0.4	0.5	0.4
Construction	4.4	4.8	5.1
Manufacturing	12.5	8.9	7.4
Services-providing	72.8	77.2	78.8
Utilities	0.4	0.4	0.3
Wholesale trade	4.1	4.0	3.7
Retail trade	10.4	10.2	9.6
Transportation and warehousing	3.0	3.0	3.0
Information	2.3	2.0	1.9
Financial activities	5.3	5.4	5.2
Professional and business services	10.8	11.8	13.2
Educational services	1.6	2.0	2.3
Health care and social assistance	8.7	10.5	11.9
Leisure and hospitality	8.0	8.9	8.8
Other services	4.1	4.2	4.3
Federal government	2.0	1.8	1.7
State and local government	12.2	13.1	12.8
Agriculture wage and salary	1.0	0.8	0.7
Agriculture self-employed and unpaid family workers	0.8	0.6	0.5
Non-agriculture self-employed and unpaid family worker	6.6	6.2	6.0
Other	1.4	1.1	1.1

Source: Bartsch 2009, Employment Projections Program, U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics