Here's something I found out the other day: more people are employed in call centers in the US than in the entire agricultural industry.

Stop and think about that. Just a century ago we were still largely a nation of farmers. Now we're a nation of service people.

I was thinking about this because agribusiness is a huge colossus that bestrides the nation and its policy-making apparatus. Think about Iowans and the ethanol fetish they bring out in politicians every four years; think about agricultural price supports and how much of the federal budget they consume. Think about simple things like the food pyramid and the conniptions the FDA goes through every time they want to revise it because of the power of the farming lobby. Agriculture is everywhere, it's practically in the DNA of America. Except that no one works on farms anymore.

I've always assumed that about 4% of the American workforce is employed in call centers, and I ballparked that 2% worked on farms. I never put them together before (or thought to check the accuracy). So I went to the website of the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and there, lo and behold, I was right. They count almost 3 million call center reps and less than half a million agriworkers.

There are more call center reps than there are accountants in America.

There are more call center reps than there are lawyers.

Agribusiness is so powerful because it's not fragmented; it's run by a small number of very large companies that carefully groom their image through collective action in the form of lobbying and public relations. The call center industry, by contrast, does nothing of the kind. It is an army of trained professionals that functions largely without leadership or collective guidance. Imagine what it would be like if we had a lobbying group to call our own, even a trade association. We might even be able to get the government to build tariffs to keep foreign call centers from handling our calls offshore. Oh wait, we don't want that. Sorry - just channelling Lou Dobbs there for a minute.