D Murphy wrote:
F. George McDuffee wrote in
:


This was not meant to imply that agriculture is not the
fundamental economic sector. Everything rests on this. FWIW the
area of North America currently called the United States will
become a net food *IMPORTER* sometime in 2006 or early 2007.


Mainly due to tastes and the fact that we can afford to eat imported food.
Well that and the fact that when it comes to food, most Americans show
little or no restraint.

But why buy canned veggies and fruit in the middle of winter when you can
get imported fresh ones?

Our climate can't support some of the foods we like to eat, such as bananas
and sugar. Yeah, they will grow in Florida but we eat way more than could
be grown there. Plus it's barely warm enough. Where are we going to grow
all of the coffee?

Then there are spices and foreign cuisine. Balsamic vinegar, wasabi,
truffles, mushrooms, cheeses, prepared meats, wines, beer, and all sorts of
other good stuff that we can afford to buy.

We could survive without all of it and can easily grow enough food for
everyone. But our diets would be a more dull.

Also I might add that the labor component (which is most of the price)
in the imported food is higher than the labor of our exported food. We
export a lot of meat, and grain.

When you figure the man hour cost of a bushel of wheat or a lb of beef
you find that the cost is very low compared to the man hour cost of
coffee, spices, cheese, wine etc.

I'm a part time cattle man. A lot of the cattle we have here and sell
to foreign markets are slaughtered and dressed here. The half carcass
is hung in a special shipping containers that keep the meat at 40
degrees for the shipment to foreign countrys. The beef arrives aged and
is cut up there. The cattle hides are salted and bailed here and then
sent to China, or Brazil for turning into leather. The internal organs
are cooked, dehydrated and then ground into a meal for pig food which is
then sold to pig farmers. A lot of pig food goes overseas to Asia and
China.

So when you add the animal feed that is produced to human food you will
find that we are not a net importer of food but a huge exporter of
agricultural products.

I might also point out that a lot of agricultural produce of this
country is for livestock feed. Look at the amount of alfalfa and grass
manufactured chicken feed and duck food that is sent to china and
Japan. Hell the largest market for Rocky Mountain Rainbow trout food
are the trout farms in Japan.



--
Censorship and Gun Control are the political equivalent of binding and
gagging a victim before raping and mugging them.

Such acts are carried out by the same thugs, one with a law degree from
a state pen, the other a law degree from a university for the same sick
perverted purposes which are to remove you from your property, liberty
and dignity, and bend you to will of others.