What type of industry does agriculture belong to?

Western economists often divide various industrial sectors into labor-intensive industries, knowledge-intensive industries and capital-intensive industries. According to traditional concepts, agriculture is considered the most primitive and labor-intensive industry. However, several economists from the Japan Association for National Economic Research (represented by Kazuo Takenaka and Yoshikazu Ye) have recently put forward a different view from the traditional concept, that is, they believe that agriculture is a knowledge-intensive industry and a developed country-type industry. The views of Takenaka et al. have attracted widespread attention in Japan. Takenaka et al. first analyzed the changes in the U.S. industrial structure. They pointed out that: Currently, the U.S. has three most internationally competitive industrial sectors—the advanced electronics industry related to aerospace and aircraft; agriculture, especially the planting industry; including universities in higher education and information services within the country. The basic common feature of the above three industries is that they are all industries in which human capital plays a decisive role. Most sectors in manufacturing are based on the application of the laws of physics and chemistry. However, in addition to physics and chemistry (machinery, electricity, fertilizers and pesticides, etc.), agriculture also requires biology, botany, animal physiology, ecology, microbiology, soil science, genetics, medicine, and meteorology. In a word, the scientific research foundation on which agriculture depends is much broader than that of industry. Zhuzhong and others believe that education and scientific research play a decisive role in the development of agricultural production. They pointed out that U.S. agriculture was not internationally competitive from the beginning.