Development of the Food Industry

As animals, humans have the natural ability to know what their body needs and how much of it they need. With these skills we were able to survive our early stages of development as cavemen and evolve and grow into the modern day humans we have become. As our knowledge grew so did our understanding of food and we began to grow our own crops. Instead of having to search for food, humans had the knowledge needed to grow the food they desired. Thus is how the farming industry developed. However, due to the industrial revolution, how one receives their food has advanced from traditional methods. The food industry has grown and has become the largest industry in the world. Now instead of having everyone raise their own crop, most people rely on others to do the job for them. Before the Industrial Revolution, food commonly would be raised and eaten by the same people. Now people visit supermarkets or hypermarkets to purchase their food. This is one of the most noticeable changes made by the Industrial Revolution.

The development of the food industry came with a push for urbanization by many farmers and other rural workers. As more workers traveled to the cities two problems began to form:

1)    A majority of people no longer could farm their own food and had to rely on the crops of others for their nutritional needs

2)    The amount of people unemployed increased and employment was needed

The food industry turned to be a very positive solution to the problem for it answered all these problems while keeping the role of the farmer intact. Now there are several ways for people to gain their food, the most common one being to buy it from a food retailer. With the addition of food manufactures and food retailers, an increase in available job positions developed as well thanks to the need for workers within markets and factories.