Genuine question, is there a truly significant portion of American agriculture that is based on plowing by hand? I was under the impression that most food comes from commercial-level farms that use machinery to plow. My dad works on a pretty small farm, and they definitely don't do anything by hand at this point. I suppose that you could be referring to people who garden as a hobby, but I don't know if I'd count that.

Plowing is not done by hand but picking is.

Sugar beet field weeding used to be done by teams of migrant workers with handheld hoes. I think they've figured out how to not have the weeds in the first place with better pesticides. Most fruits and vegetables are picked by hand.

You don't need big muscles to pick fruits and vegetables though, just endurance (I've done it for a couple of summers as a job).

I guess I didn't realize this was about muscles. I was just replying to the guy asking if agriculture was done by hand. Maybe shouldn't follow threads via the /comments page. I end up not knowing what the context is.

Makes sense. I guess I just was imagining corn and grains, stuff that seems like it'd be easy to pick mechanically. Didn't really think about stuff like beets. Thanks for the answer though!

There are still a lot of blue-collar workers.