If the number and variety of schools in Ceres has decreased in the last 80 years, the industries show an even greater change. In the flourishing years of the last century, as may be seen in the Folk Museum, almost every rural trade seems to have been represented in the village.

In 1793 there were 138 looms in the Parish and about 800 weavers and winders. At this time, almost 200 villagers found work in the Mills and some 50 in the Lime Works. Later, there is mention of 500 handlooms in the Parish and 3 mills for spinning yarn. In 1827 two of the latter were built at Pitscottie and were worked by a water-wheel, assisted by a steam engine in sunnier. Much flax was grown in this part of Fife at one tine and during the First World War an attempt was made to grow it again. In a Parish Record of 1862 we are told that "the linen manufacture by hand-- loom weaving has long been carried on here, but is at present in a rather declining state". There were also several Bleachfields in Ceres but they, along with the handlooms and spinning mills are long defunct. Westwood's Parochial Directory for 1862 describes many of the inhabitants as being employed in agricultural labours and in the lime quarries and coal--pits. The lime kilns are long burnt out and the small, more or less, opencast form of mining also ceased many years ago, although one inhabitant of Ceres remembers going to a part of Craighall in a pony-cart with his grandfather to gather coal which existed in parts of the Parish, south of the water of Ceres. Several Feuars still have a right to take stones from a quarry at Cairngreen for building purposes, a right not often exercised in this day and age. At Greenside there was a windmill which threshed corn, ground meal and sawed wood. A miller's business was carried on at Ceres Mill and there was the brewery beside the Parish Church.

A hundred years ago, Ceres had 5 boot-makers, 10 dressmakers (one of whom made straw bonnets), 5 tailors, 8 joiners, 9 grocers, a saddler, a wheelwright and a cooper.

There were 2 Annual Fairs held in March and October, when there were large numbers of horses and cattle brought to market, also wool and corn and the 25 Inns in the village no doubt did a roaring trade as would the boot-makers, dress-makers and other traders.

The village post-office, housed in one of the grocer's shops, means a regular postal service, instead of the villagers having to pay a messenger to take their letters into Cupar. The local "carriers" who used to carry goods of all kinds to neighbouring towns no longer function and in place of the daily coach, which met the ferry-boat at Largo, there are buses and also a small postal bus-service to certain villages which have no regular bus-service. "Nannie Nairn" no longer goes to the coast in her little pony-cart to fetch fresh fish, including the "caller herrin' frae the Forth", but various fish vans from the coastal fishing villages come regularly with their wares.