Business eras will dominate the new millennium.

• Author: Molitor, Graham T.T.
• Position: USA Tomorrow

WAVES OF ONCOMING activity that will dominate the advanced economies over the new millennium can be clearly foreseen. This succession of economic "mainsprings" defines new growth sectors and declining ones, suggests impending investment opportunities and dead ends, and pinpoints where the best jobs and livelihoods will be. Preparation for life's work consumes individuals' first 20-25 years. Therefore, mapping out livelihoods requires conscious forethought and planning. Gaining skills to advance one's life, let alone being able to contribute to societal advance, is a powerful and compelling reason for parents to consider options carefully. Pursuing potentially obsolete skills or ones with dead-end prospects is not in the best interest of individuals or society.

This changing landscape has a timing and tempo. At least nine identifiable waves of economic change have been, are, or will sweep across America: three in our past; another, the ongoing center of economic activity; and five more yet to come. Throughout the course of history, nations have advanced through three successive waves of economic development. Each of these eras centers around a different set of economic pursuits.

The Agricultural Era centered on wresting sustenance and livelihoods from nature's bounty. Employment based on food, fiber, forestry, and fishing accounted for well over 90% of all jobs during Colonial times. Currently, farming makes up just one to two percent of U.S. jobs. When farms ceased to employ a majority of workers in the 1880s, food processors and manufacturers became the biggest job segment within the sector. Years later, services took over. Initially, distributors (wholesalers and retailers) dominated all jobs in agribusiness; currently, it is food-service providers; and eventually, it could be e-business (communication era) providers.

Although seldom thought of as the nation's most technologically advanced activity, that characterization is an apt one. Production and productivity have become prodigious--so much so that 60-80% of key crops are exported, and Americans eat about 10-20% more than is healthy (with the result that well over 50% are overweight or obese). Production overwhelmingly surpasses domestic need. This pattern of providing far beyond needs and accomplishing that feat with fewer and fewer workers is typical.

Agriculture, although employing an ever-smaller contingent of workers, has not reached its final pinnacle by a long shot. Looking to the future, it is easy to see new twists and turns in each of the oncoming "Big Five" economic sectors that will unleash ever-increasing output using still fewer inputs. For instance, as consumers spend less time pursuing and satisfying food and fiber requirements, they acquire more spare time that can be devoted to leisure.

Further into the millennium, genetic engineering will boost yields, enhance nutrient content, enable plants to thrive in previously impossible conditions, and engraft genetic enhancements that will all but eliminate the need for agrichemical inputs. Megamaterials technologies could usher in food replicators, currently the stuff of science fiction. Ultimately, bioreactors will yield only useful and valuable components: orange sacs, for example, with no roots, trunks, branches, leaves, rind, or seed sapping unnecessary resources or effort. Robotics will continue to take over more operations in every agribusiness subsector. The new space age may see crops grown aboard orbiting space satellites or on other planets. Around-the-clock radiation, shorter crop maturation, and multiple crops could become part and parcel of this phase of agribusiness development.

Eking food and fiber from land could turn into a small-niche enterprise or a mere historical curiosity. Farmers may endure a similar fate to what has befallen horses. Previously a mainstay of transportation and brute work, horses now are mainly to be found on dude ranches, at riding academies...