[SPLIT] food imports and stuff

deadonthestreet

The Cat wrote: »

Most of your food is imported too.

Yeah can you back that up with anything because aside from bananas and the like, this statement doesn't make any sense at all. We grow grains, we grow vegetables, we grow cows and pigs and chickens in huge quantities.

The Cat

deadonthestreet wrote: »

The Cat wrote: »

Most of your food is imported too.

Yeah can you back that up with anything because aside from bananas and the like, this statement doesn't make any sense at all. We grow grains, we grow vegetables, we grow cows and pigs and chickens in huge quantities.

Dude, there isn't a nation on earth that's food-secure (ie, all or nearly all domestic product bar a couple of luxuries) besides Cuba. And I'm speaking from memory of California state imports, plus some other random bits and pieces. Everyone grows a fair amount of their own stuff, but I think you'd be surprised by just how much fresh fruit and veg, grains, and processed foodstuffs is imported from o/s, simply because its cheaper. No-one's surprised that manufactured goods are mostly from other countries, and its usually seen as a perfectly normal sign of globalisation. Why the sudden defensiveness when it comes to foodstuffs?

Shinto

The Cat wrote: »

deadonthestreet wrote: »

The Cat wrote: »

Most of your food is imported too.

Yeah can you back that up with anything because aside from bananas and the like, this statement doesn't make any sense at all. We grow grains, we grow vegetables, we grow cows and pigs and chickens in huge quantities.

Dude, there isn't a nation on earth that's food-secure (ie, all or nearly all domestic product bar a couple of luxuries) besides Cuba. And I'm speaking from memory of California state imports, plus some other random bits and pieces. Everyone grows a fair amount of their own stuff, but I think you'd be surprised by just how much fresh fruit and veg, grains, and processed foodstuffs is imported from o/s, simply because its cheaper. No-one's surprised that manufactured goods are mostly from other countries, and its usually seen as a perfectly normal sign of globalisation. Why the sudden defensiveness when it comes to foodstuffs?

It's not defensiveness, it's like someone saying that Uraguay is a wealthy country. You're not quite sure but it sounds wrong.

But like I was saying, the value of our imported food is only 65 billion per year.

The Cat

What's the total? because 65 billion is a lot of cash in raw terms, and certainly a pretty massive tonnage of food. I mean, that's got to be paying off a lot of world bank loans :P

I'm certainly willing to bet that the amount of imported stuff consumed is class-limited. A lot of it will have that 'exotic' cachet and not comprise staples - cheeses, wine, chocolate, smallgoods etc. But go for a toddle through the supermarket and have a look at the 'made in' labels, and you'll see more than you'd expect. There's also the loophole of "made in the US/Aus/UK from imported foodstuffs".

Shinto

The Cat wrote: »

What's the total? because 65 billion is a lot of cash in raw terms, and certainly a pretty massive tonnage of food. I mean, that's got to be paying off a lot of world bank loans :P

I'm certainly willing to bet that the amount of imported stuff consumed is class-limited. A lot of it will have that 'exotic' cachet and not comprise staples - cheeses, wine, chocolate, smallgoods etc. But go for a toddle through the supermarket and have a look at the 'made in' labels, and you'll see more than you'd expect. There's also the loophole of "made in the US/Aus/UK from imported foodstuffs".

The total what?

If you break it down it comes to a little over $200 per American, which is about 4% of what Americans spend on food per year.

The Cat

no, like the total spent on food by US citizens per year, imported and not. maybe with the Hiltons left out of the equation, for some attempt at a realistic figure.

Shinto

The average person hovers between $4500 and $5700 depending on whether they are a member of a household with children.

The Cat

hmm, fair enough. My own googling is showing imports on a rapid rise over the past decade, though. Also that more than 80% of your seafood and roughly half your fruit is from OS. That doesn't seem to jibe with your dollar estimate.

The Cat

this is interesting though, claiming that meat consumption is down: http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/ers/FAU/2000s/2002/FAU-07-03-2002_Special_Report.pdf

tangential, but since the veg thread is dead...

The Cat

SPLITZORED

MalaysianShrew

Keep in mind that a lot of fruits and such that are out of season get imported in the off season. So while perhaps most strawberries are grown in Cali, in the off season you still have fresh strawberries in your supermarket, and they come from the other side of the world where it's not winter.

So, I guess my point is that while we may import a lot of fruit, a lot of it is simply to meet the demand for out of season fruit, which I wouldn't consider a problem with our foodstuffs being outsourced, because I consider a strawberry flown across the globe so you don't have to eat frozen ones to be a fucking luxury good.

nexuscrawler

Most of our winter fruit comes from Chile and Argentina. They've got pretty booming food markets becasue of our demands for year-round fruits.

The only crops that the US really has a stranglehold on are corns and wheat due to our ridiculous subsidies that let us undersell just about anyone else.

Corvus

Some food imports in general baffle me. I have no idea how it ends up being cost effective for there to be lamb from New Zealand in my super market in Vancouver. I also don't understand why we would be importing meat from outside North America at all, surely we produce more than enough meat of all kinds on the continent that imports of meat from elsewhere should be more expensive than its worth?

FirstComradeStalin

Corvus wrote: »

Some food imports in general baffle me. I have no idea how it ends up being cost effective for there to be lamb from New Zealand in my super market in Vancouver. I also don't understand why we would be importing meat from outside North America at all, surely we produce more than enough meat of all kinds on the continent that imports of meat from elsewhere should be more expensive than its worth?

Countries like Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand, along with certain US states thrive by having the capability to run incredibly massive cattle ranches because of their geographic situation. Supertankers and cheap refridgeration make it extremely efficient to move that meat around the world, too. As long as it's somewhat cheaper than the local product it's always going to make sense to import.

However, US farmers are continually kept competitive (food prices are inflated overall by the government, but US farmers have their prices inflated a good bit less) with outside competitors because they are one of the most disproportionately powerful lobbies on K Street. Getting the OK of the farmers is still identified as getting the OK of "the little man" even though most modern US farmers are anything but little men. Beyond that, the justification I hear tossed around all the time for this preferential treatment is that people don't want their food supply to be controlled by other nations in case there is ever war, because hey, we need that to live. I don't really think that's a worthwhile argument though, because a war of that scale is a very hypothetical situation, especially for it to be a non-nuclear confrontation.

And just to be clear, government subsidies aren't designed to lower prices. Instead, the prices of foreign competition is driven up by tariffs and regulations, while the government subsidies simply allow the US farmers to overproduce by buying the excess product they have to make to stay profitable.

The Cat

Although I'm not a huge fan of those transport costs (evironmental externalities lol) or the impacts of those giant ranches on our local environment, I think there's a place for food imports. A broader palate benefits everyone. We only use like a couple of dozen plant species for most of our food intake, for example, despite the fact that there are many other species that are really good eating. Grains in particular, like Quinoa, are terribly underused. Popularising these crops enables agricultural diversification, giving other countries a leg-up in the agricultural markets and (theorising here) I'd say that it makes it easier for alternatives to factory farming to be profitable in developed countries. Growing a wider variety of crops (and varieties within-species) also reduces the food supply's vulnerability to pests and diseases.

Corlis

For food-security, isn't it more a case of being able to feed your country on your own, if our major food-suppliers suddenly wanted to starve us out? For instance, I doubt that England could produce enough food to feed its entire population on its own; I'm pretty sure that became an issue in WWII, as their imports from America/Canada were getting torpedoed, and they had to have rationing. Conversely I'd imagine that here in Canada we could grow enough food to feed ourselves if we couldn't import it. Of course, we wouldn't have too many oranges in the winter in such circumstances, but we wouldn't starve. That's probably how farm-subsidy lobbyists likely argue for the continued existance of subsidies, though I'm unsure whether I agree.

FirstComradeStalin

Corlis wrote: »

For food-security, isn't it more a case of being able to feed your country on your own, if our major food-suppliers suddenly wanted to starve us out? For instance, I doubt that England could produce enough food to feed its entire population on its own; I'm pretty sure that became an issue in WWII, as their imports from America/Canada were getting torpedoed, and they had to have rationing. Conversely I'd imagine that here in Canada we could grow enough food to feed ourselves if we couldn't import it. Of course, we wouldn't have too many oranges in the winter in such circumstances, but we wouldn't starve. That's probably how farm-subsidy lobbyists likely argue for the continued existance of subsidies, though I'm unsure whether I agree.

No see, the argument is that if we deregulated our agriculture then foreign products would supplant native ones because farms in other countries like South America or elsewhere are simply more profitable. Then our own agricultural infrastructure would mostly disappear and be taken for other uses. That part is mostly true.

But where it gets crazy is that most pro-farming lobbies are arguing against this happening because maybe, just maybe, if we ever got into a war with everyone else in the world (everyone hates America because we have freedom and they're all just jealous) we'd be fucked because we wouldn't have any food. This is disregarding the fact that the US government keeps strategic food reserves, or that getting into a war with the rest of the world would be a nuclear holocaust.

Also, quinoa tastes awful, no matter how you cook it.