Many previous articles on this site have been bullish on Big Oil and Big Pharma stocks.

Investors who have bought stocks in these sectors have done well.  For Big Oil, as one example, BP PLC (NYSE: BP) is up more than 20 percent for the last year of market action.  Over the same period, Merck (NYSE: MRK), Big Pharma at its finest, has risen by nearly 30 percent.

But Big Agriculture has done well, too.

Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT), the world’s largest make of tractors and other farming equipment, has risen by 27.80 percent for the last year.  The biggest fertilizer entity in the world, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan (NYSE: POT) has jumped nearly 15 percent just for the last quarter of market action.  For 2014, the main exchange traded fund for agriculture, PowerShares DB Agriculture (NYSE: DBA), has soared by more than 20 percent.

There are 3 reasons to be bullish about the farm sector.

The market for agricultural goods is getting bigger.  The world’s population recently topped 7 billion.  It will only continue to grow.

There is also more money to spend on food.  The consumer class is expanding.  The first items to be bought more when there is more disposable income is food.

Not only will be there be more consumers with more money, there will be more living in cities.  That means fewer farmers will be feeding more people.  From that, there will be a greater need for machinery from Caterpillar, fertilizer from Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, and more goods and services from other companies in the agriculture sector.

That makes for a bullish outlook for publicly traded companies such as Caterpillar and Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan.  It has already been a bullish year for stocks in the industry group such as Caterpillar (chart below).  With global growth in the consumer sector and urbanization, it should get even better.