Are rural communities dependent on animal agriculture for jobs

• Farming jobs lost to to industrialisation
• CAFOS reduce employment and provide low quality jobs
• Vittis et al., 2025

UK

No, while rural areas support around half a million businesses, most are unrelated to farming. Small and micro enterprises (such as pubs, cafés, hospitality, arts and education) employed about 70% of the workers in rural
England, pre-pandemic. A tenth of employment in rural areas is tourism related, which, again, pre-pandemic, provides more to the UK economy than agriculture.

figures for England show that agriculture, forestry and fishing as a sector make one of the smallest contributions to rural economies.