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Hello Guys! This is something that I have been trying to figure out for quite a while. Now on the surface, yes the US grows a ton of food and is the largest food exporter in the world. The real question is, why are we not producing even more than we currently are. This chart sums it up well:
When ranking the list based on arable land, the US is the world leader, with a sizable lead over both India and China. Yet China blows us out of the water with the amount of food they produce, on less arable land. Here are a couple side-by-side comparisons, 2011 figures.
Wheat: China 117.4, US 54.4
Rice: China 197.2, US 11.0
Maize: US 333, China 163
Soybeans: US 90.6, China 15
Hogs: China 425.6, US 61.7
Fresh Vegetables: Not listing them, but I can assure China leads by a wide margin in almost every category
Apples: China 33.2, US 4
I could keep going on and on, but the point is, apart from Maize and Soybeans, China blows the US away.
Heres the questions I have, and would love some feedback
How in the world does China grow so much food? Is it differences in geography and climate? Double-cropping? Higher yields per acre? Or is the real question why is the US so far down the list. Are we not utilizing as much of our land? Is the US not living up to its full potential agricultural output, and if so how much more could we do? Could the US feed a population of 1.3 billion without importing food, as China largely does (apart from soybean imports)?
Agricultural Economics 101: Market + amount produced = market price.
Too much production for the available market drives the price down.
Fallow fields/crops destroyed/alternate crops grown/farms lost to city drones drives the price back up. The option of alternate crops involves production costs. Farmers are businesspeople who have to survive just as any other businessperson.
China has much more population. More market can take more production. Also, much of Chinese agriculture is inefficiently produced.
In America modern agriculture has become so efficient that huge amounts of crops can be produced.
In America, federal crop subsidies (which are and always have been pretty minimal in the national budget) were established to manage on a national level the problem of overproduction of any given crop. Overproduction drives the price down. Farms (businesses) are lost or no crops are grown = underproduction. Cost of food goes up, people starve. Also, and probably more importantly to Washington, the National GDP is affected and the economy as a whole goes wonky. Those of you who whine about farm subsidies are the same people crying about the problem of industries and businesses closing down or moving overseas and the high rate of unemployment. Would you rather pay for farm subsidies or for unemployment payments and drug treatment centers?
In America, one way the problem of the cycle of overproduction/underproduction has been solved is to find more markets for the products of our fields. Not only do we sell overseas (to China, in particular) but also many field crops are now used in industry rather than for immediately consumable food. The corn and soybeans in our fields are used in all kinds of things you use: air fresheners, disposable diapers, plastics, ethanol, etc. Research is underway to use field crops to completely power vehicles to reduce our reliance on foreign oil.
Hoooo, there's so much more to explain about this. Think the loss of American farmland has nothing to do with the international drug trade and violence in Mexico? Think again.
We have large amounts of stupendously productive arable land that’s easy to farm (in places like Iowa or the Central Valley of California) that we don’t have to use tracts that are arable but less productive, like in New England or parts of the South.
Could we produce far more food than we do right now? Absolutely. Should we? Not if there is no demand for it. All the supermarkets I see are bursting with food, a lot of which get thrown away unsold.
Heres the questions I have, and would love some feedback
How in the world does China grow so much food? Is it differences in geography and climate? Double-cropping? Higher yields per acre? Or is the real question why is the US so far down the list. Are we not utilizing as much of our land? Is the US not living up to its full potential agricultural output, and if so how much more could we do? Could the US feed a population of 1.3 billion without importing food, as China largely does (apart from soybean imports)?
China has many more farmers, simply put. There are a lot of agricultural inefficiencies in the Chinese industry and U.S. production per labor hour blows away Chinese production. The Chinese government also heavily favors grain production in China in order to keep it self-sufficient in that area (a distrust of the free market in this case). Though, in some down years, China is not self-sufficient and has to import grain. China's expected to become the world leader in agricultural imports by the next decade. Overall, the U.S. imports more because our agriculture is better integrated into the world economy (even if we subsidize our grain to an unethical degree).
As for U.S. imports, we don't import grain. We typically import tropical products and specialty products or we import things out of season--like tomatoes during the winter. This is complicated a bit because of NAFTA and other trade agreements with Latin America. The U.S. imports a lot of pork because our subsidized corn feeds Spanish pigs making it cheaper to simply raise pigs in Mexico than the U.S.
That aside, China has less then a third of the arable land then the US, but they grow more crops simply because they have to. They have more then a billion more people to feed then we do. Thats why the quality of our farm land is much better (that and our agriculture techniques are far more advanced.)
The US grows a diversity of crops, but it's main crop is corn because its the most versatile and profitable of all crops.
If you look at which country exports the most crops (in monetary terms) the US is still number one, because we can grow enough for ourselves and enough to export a lot of crops. China can't export as much because it has to feed it's huge population first.
Last edited by Astorian31; 03-12-2013 at 06:39 PM..
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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If you happen to see the boxes the grocery store produce comes in, you will find that much of it comes from Mexico and South America. We cannot grow a lot of the fruit and vegetables all year, but want to eat it fresh all year, so have to import from farther south. Add to that the lack of U.S. workers willing to work in the fields and you can expect the production of hand-picked produce to drop even faster in the near future. Many farmers are switching to crops like almonds than can be picked by machine.
Because it's cheaper to import it from nations paying their workers nothing, fertilizing with human waste, and using pesticides long ago outlawed for use here.
Here, the government regulation and taxation involved in raising food far from economical, unless you are a multinational conglomerate that doesn't have to worry about such things. I once owned a small herd of dairy goats and had lots of extra milk. I learned that you could sell the milk for pet food, but if it was for human use, at least $!00,000 in special equipment and numerous government inspections would be needed just to start. The small farm food producer has been run out of business by Big Government serving Big Business, just like in all sectors of the economy.
This is exactly why farm subsidies need to either go away entirely or entirely redone.
This graph shows that the crops that should be subsidized are not and the ones that are subsidized don't need to be. The goals of the subsidies should be simply to prevent a drastic shortage in food and thus a famine. However, people do not eat most of the corn or soybeans grown in the US. It goes to ethanol or to meat production. People don't eat cotton either. And why on earth do we subsidize tobacco and then run anti-smoking commercials.
In fact, the only products on that list that should be subsidized are rice, wheat, and peanuts. Meat or dairy is not an essential food product and therefore should not be subsidized.
Because of this, either we should subsidize grains, legumes, and fruit and vegetables, or nothing at all.
In fact, the only products on that list that should be subsidized are rice, wheat, and peanuts.
Wheat and peanuts are used in many non-food products too - does that make them evil to you? Rice can't be grown in most parts of America.
Are natural resources used in industry not worth governmental support? You'd be surprised what products would be gone from the market without corn and soybean. And you'd be surprised how many jobs (maybe even yours) would be affected without governmental support of agricultural products.
All governments everywhere support their natural resources and businesses through giving tax breaks and free land to huge mining and oil companies, and heavily taxing or preventing imports which would compete with American products.
I can actually argue both sides of this question. I do think the back of monoagriculture needs to be broken, and the big 4 (Monsanto, ConAgra, ArcherDanielsMidland, and Cargill - and maybe they are all owned by Dow or something, I don't know) currently have us all trapped in a cycle of corn/soybean field crops - hog confinements and cattle feedlots - McDonalds and other fast food businesses. And that's not good. As a producer, I do feel trapped in this box. What crops we grow are to a large extend dictated by things like transportation costs - "where are the mills, railroad tracks, trucking routes and markets for what I produce"? So many things are tied together - which explains the development of the huge companies that own railroads/mills/other processing factories/ fields and chemicals.
We do constantly discuss this issue, you know.
I'm not an economist, but I do know the situation is not as simple as "farmers shouldn't get free money"
And every discussion of farming shouldn't devolve into boohoos about "subsidies". I could probably find a legitmate complaint about too much governmental support of most of the businesses/industries where the rest of you work.
I just think that boosting cotton for example, makes wool and synthetic fabrics comparatively more expensive, and thus skews the natural best allocation of resources in favor of cotton. Why should the government do this?
Corn and soybeans are more complex. While not subsidizing them could lead to less caloric production in the US, subsidizing them leads directly to the monoculture.
Tobacco should not be subsidized period and I don't think anyone will argue with me on this one.
But to say that subsidies are to prevent famine is a false statement. They are designed to boost the supply of raw materials in order to lower the cost of living.
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