Prediction Open AI assessment confidence: 85% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Gorham: US farming population will drop from two percent to one percent

Sid Gorham · a16z Podcast | Data Down on the Farm · Jan 2, 2019 · at 26:36

Sid Gorham, CEO of Granular, discusses agricultural consolidation and farm workforce demographics on the a16z Podcast.

0:00 / 0:07exact quote · 7.7s

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“It used to be that a hundred percent of the country farmed and now two percent of the country farms, and it's going to be one percent before we know it, right?”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Sid Gorham states that the proportion of the U.S. population working in agriculture has fallen to two percent and predicts it will soon drop to one percent.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

In 2015, standard USDA ERS and BLS CPS data placed direct on-farm employment at approximately 1.4% to 1.6% of the U.S. workforce. By 2022-2025, direct farm employment decreased slightly to between 1.2% and 1.36% of total U.S. employment, but it has not yet reached 1.0% or lower. Because the speaker did not specify a fixed date or deadline ('before we know it'), the 2020 horizon is a default pipeline horizon. Under the rules, a default horizon cannot make an open prediction false unless the outcome becomes impossible. Since agricultural workforce share may continue to decline toward 1.0% in future years, the claim remains open and not yet determinable.

USDA ERS reported direct on-farm employment at 1.4% of total U.S. employment in 2015 and 1.2% in 2022.
BLS CPS data for 2025 showed 2.225 million people employed in agriculture out of 163.493 million total workforce (1.36%).
Official workforce/employment metrics have not reached 1.0% or below as of 2026.

Checked against

[1] nationalacademies.org [2] statbase.org [3] escop.info [4] usda.gov [5] usafacts.org [6] epa.gov [7] usda.gov [8] bls.gov

"Bureau of Labor Statistics" employment in agriculture as percentage of total employment 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 USDA proportion of US population working in agriculture 1 percent 2 percent "USDA" "direct on-farm employment" "percent of total U.S. employment" 2015 OR 2016 OR 2017 OR 2018 OR 2019 OR 2020 USDA ERS employment in agriculture percentage US workforce BLS percentage of workforce employed in agriculture 2015 2020

assessed as of 2026-07-31

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

⏳ next review: 2020-11-24; checked again automatically on the next resolution wave

Mentioned

Sid Gorham U.S. population

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