Question: how did the agricultural revolution allow for the industrial revolution to occur

title: Mechanised agriculture
text: According to a 1977 report by the California Agrarian Action Project , during the summer of 1976 in California , many harvest machines had been equipped with a photo - electric scanner that sorted out green tomatoes among the ripe red ones using infrared lights and colour sensors . It worked in lieu of 5,000 hand harvesters causing displacement of innumerable farm labourers as well as wage cuts and shorter work periods . Migrant workers were hit the hardest . To withstand the rigour of the machines , new crop varieties were bred to match the automated pickers . UC Davis Professor G.C. Hanna propagated a thick - skinned tomato called VF - 145 . But even still , millions were damaged with impact cracks and university breeders produced a more tougher and juiceless `` square round '' tomato . Small farms were of insufficient size to obtain financing to purchase the equipment and within 10 years , 85 % of the state 's 4,000 cannery tomato farmers were out of the business . This led to a concentrated tomato industry in California that `` now packed 85 % of the nation 's tomato products '' . The monoculture fields fostered rapid pest growth , requiring the use of `` more than four million pounds of pesticides each year '' which greatly affected the health of the soil , the farm workers , and possibly the consumers .