As farm jobs decline, food industry work holds steady

As economies expand, people don't just eat more food - they eat differently. A sweeping new study covering nearly three decades and 189 countries finds that while traditional farm jobs decline as nations grow wealthier, employment in the broader food industry - from processing plants to restaurants - remains surprisingly steady, offering better wages but also deepening gender pay gaps.

The research challenges the classic economic story that development means a simple shift of workers from farms to factories. Instead, the researchers found much of the movement occurs within the food system itself, reshaping which workers earn more and which earn less.

"Agri-food value chain employment and compensation adjust with structural transformation," published Sept. 10 in Nature Food.

These shifts are driven more by consumer demand than by improvements in agricultural productivity, according to corresponding author Chris Barrett, the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management in the SC Johnson College of Business and a professor in the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. Co-authors include Miguel Gómez, the Robert G. Tobin Professor of Food Marketing, and Pat Canning adjunct professor, both in the SC Johnson College of Business, as well as graduate alumni Shiyun Jiang, M.S. '24, and Dianna Tran, M.S. '22.

"As incomes rise, people demand more convenience, safety and diversity in their diets," Barrett said. "That creates a huge pull for workers into food processing, retail, restaurants and transportation - not just into manufacturing."

Among the study's most striking results, jobs in food services and retail now rival or surpass farm employment in wealthier countries. Workers who leave farming typically find higher pay in midstream and downstream jobs like food manufacturing and distribution.

That's good news - but not necessarily for women, because this shift reinforces gender pay inequality.

"In low-income agrarian economies, men and women are largely doing the same work," Barrett said. "People leaving farming find safer jobs and better pay. But it's not equally good for men and women."

While women do earn more after leaving farm work, they tend to move into service-sector jobs - in restaurants and retail - that are consistently lower paid than the midstream jobs in manufacturing, logistics, processing, wholesale trade and transport, where men predominate.

Over time, the difference adds up. The study found that as economies transition from poor to rich, the ratio of women's to men's average earnings in the food system falls from near parity to about 94 cents on the dollar. And because the analysis could not account for pay gaps within the same industry, much less the same occupation, the true divide is surely larger.

The findings underscore a tension facing policymakers. Calls to bring more young people "back to the farm" in some countries may be at odds with economic realities. The real job growth isn't on the farm, according to Barrett. It's in the industries that process, move and serve food - but those jobs are unequally distributed between men and women.

Globally, nearly half the world's population depends on food-related work. With consumer spending on food increasingly dominated by processing, retail and restaurants - more than 80% of food expenditures in high-income countries - the researchers argue that policymakers need to see agriculture as part of a much larger food system, one with stark gender consequences.

The researchers analyzed data from 1993 to 2021 from 189 countries accounting for most of the global economy. They distributed the data into six different food value chain industries, integrating gender-disaggregated employment data by country, industry and year with data from multiple regions describing monetary flows between industries and nations reflecting value addition linked to consumer food expenditures.

As incomes rise, consumers shift expenditures away from basic staples to value-added foods. This leads labor to shift from farming to food processing, transporting, marketing and food service, Gómez said.

"It is crucial to highlight that consumer demand is an important driver of structural changes in the food value chain," he said. "As countries become affluent and both members of a household are working, there is an increase in demand for convenience foods and for a diversified diet."

Co-authors also include researchers from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Funding for this research was provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agri-food Systems Targeted Applied Research (ASTAR).