It's okay, they're leaving.
Posted on 08/21/2003 2:39:37 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
To most American farmers and ranchers, free trade is like motherhood, apple pie and John Deere green: it's an unquestioned core belief of the farming faith.
A July report from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS), however, relates that freer ag trade over the last 20 years has allowed imported food--especially imported red meat, fruits and vegetables--to claim a larger share of the American stomach.
The big picture, according to Andy Jerardo, the report's author, shows the average share of food imports consumed by Americans has climbed from 7.8 percent in 1981-1985 to 11.1 percent in 1997-2001. That's a staggering 50 percent increase in America's taste for imported food in just 20 years.
Part of that steep climb, notes ERS, is due to our expanding appetites. We now eat 11 percent more food per year per capita than we did in 1981, 2000 lbs. versus 1,800 lbs. Much of that belt-busting increase, though, came from our off-shore free-trading friends.
For example, 8.7 percent of all beef consumed in the U.S. in 1980 was imported; in 2001 that import share stood at 11.6 percent. In round numbers, that means per capita consumption of imported beef rose 33 percent in the last two decades. ERS pegs the current value of those beef imports at $2.2 billion, a handsome sum in the chronically depressed domestic cattle market.
The story is even more dramatic for imported pork and lamb consumption. In 1980, 3.3 percent of all pork consumed per capita in America was imported; in 2001 the figure was 54 percent higher, or 5.1 percent. Likewise, 9.5 percent of all lamb eaten in the U.S. in 1980 was imported. In 2001, 40 percent was imported.
The rise in imported meat has many causes: a strong U.S. dollar, reductions or eliminations of import tariffs and quotas, cyclical changes in domestic production and free trade agreements like NAFTA to name just a few.
But one inescapable consequence of the flood is that rising imports drained domestic prices. In 1980, the average slaughter steer price in the U.S. was $67.64 per hundredweight; in 1999 average price was $65.56.
Changes in the American diet also hit producer prices. According to the ERS, consumption of fruits, vegetables and cereals has grown 20 percent since 1980 while consumption of animal products, which include dairy, has grown just 7 percent. Crops and products now take up 57 percent of the American dinner plate and animal products 43 percent.
That's a 3 percent rise for the former and a 3 percent drop for the latter.
American meat producers aren't the only farmers getting nipped by rising imports. Indeed, American fruit and vegetable growers are being slaughtered by imports. In 1980, 5.8 percent of the per capita consumption of fresh and frozen fruits in America was imported; in 2001 it was 23.1 percent. Likewise, 16.6 percent of all vegetables you eat today are imported; 20 years ago only 5.9 percent of veggies eaten in America were imported.
Even more shocking, imported wheat and wheat products claimed 10.7 percent of the American food market in 2001. Two decades ago they grabbed an almost invisible 0.3 percent. The numbers are almost identical for rice.
In fact, if you follow the numbers charted by ERS, American farmers are losing their grip on the American food market. And one big--and getting bigger--reason is free trade, says Alan Tonelson, a research fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council.
In an editorial posted at www.tradealert.org on July 31 (Are America's Farmers Turning Against Free Trade?), Tonelson senses that American agriculture's uncritical faith in free trade may be flagging. "Domestic ag producers are realizing--just like small manufacturers--that they have been sold a bill of goods on globalization," wrote Tonelson.
"Despite promises that new trade deals would open enormous foreign markets that world-beating American farmers and ranchers would dominate, the nation's historically huge ag trade surplus has been shrinking steadily (even as) ... most commodity export volumes have been stagnant since the mid-1970s, and prices have cratered."
He's right; the facts, just provided by ERS, prove it.
Alan Guebert is an award-winning free-lance agricultural journalist who was raised on an 800-acre, 100-cow southern Illinois dairy farm. After graduation from the University of Illinois in December 1980, he worked as a writer and senior editor at Professional Farmers of America and Successful Farming magazine.
In 1984, Guebert returned to his native Illinois to establish his free-lance writing business. His self-syndicated column, The Farm and Food File, began in June, 1993, and now appears weekly in nearly 60 newspapers from Maryland to Nebraska, Texas to Canada. It covers every aspect of farm and food production and policy.
Small Livestock Farms Disappearing
by John Brannon
Southern Livestock Review
Small livestock farms are scarce today. In 10 years they could be just a memory.
Their successor?
"Big corporations will have it all," said Roger Roehrig of Mascoutab, Illinois.
Roehrig was the judge at the Junior Swine Show August 14 at the Obion County Fair in Union City, Tennessee.
He's been judging since he was 17. It's a vocation he got into by...well, accident.
"It was at Belleville, Illinois. A fellow didn't show up to judge, so they sort of drafted me. I was forced into it. I was scared to death," Roehrig said.
"I've been doing it 27 years now. I stay buy. I've got to do the Tennessee State Fair and then one at Dexter, Missouri. That'll be 14 this year."
Roehrig said that wherever he goes, he sees good quality swine but less of them because there are less breeders. Big corporations don't buy from hog farms.
"Used to be, hot farms were all over the country. They're all about gone now," he said. "Big corporations are pushing the small hog farms out, like Walmart pushed all the mom and pop stores out. The small ones can't compete with the Tysons and Smithfields.
"There was a time when you could work a small hog farm and make a living at it. These days, if you don't have a trailer load, the big boys won't even talk to you. There's no market for the little man's hogs any more. They want to do everything under contract."
Roehrig, a hog breeder himself 50 years, raises purebreds - Hampshires. Yorkshires and Durocs.
"I'd say that in ten years, all the small livestock farms, especially hog farms, will be gone the same way small chicken farms went," he said.
Meanwhile, he said he enjoys judging events such as the Junior Swine Show.
"Most young people still in it stay focused. They have an interest in it, and that's good," he said. "These are the young people who'll go on and become something. Raising hogs helps them learn about life and competition. Keeping them involved is a lot cheaper than paying them out of trouble. I've had kids come up to me - they were kids when I first met them - who are now 40. I'd judged their hogs. They'd turned out to be good, useful citizens. They'd remember me and come up and speak. Made me feel good."
Roehrig, 63, has a 1,500-acre farm about 30 miles east of St. Louis, Missouri. He raises soybeans and wheat as well as about 100 head of purebred hogs.
From what I can see, this article neither affirms nor contradicts that information. It merely addresses how imports have increased their share of our domestic market. (Most likely at the expense of domestic production.)
It would not surprise me, however, to learn that we ARE a net importer of food. On of the goals of globalism is to render America helpless and dependent on foreign sources of production.
On the contrary, this is a danger of economic isolationism, not globalism. If, for example, we were to try and produce all of our own food, then when lo and behold the Great Dust Bowl II strikes, we're in pretty much the same situation we were seventy years ago. However, if we also have markets in Argentina, China, England, and Russia then we can simply shift production away from agriculture and trade for food. Diversity == dependable markets.
Yes, if you depend solely on one country for a resource, you may be in trouble if it decides not to trade with you anymore. But that's the same if you're depending on one domestric region, company, or factory. What makes most sense for America IMHO is to accept all the economic benefits of free trade and rely on precautionary measures (such as oil reserves) and a strong military to make sure she never becomes victim of trade blackmail.
I am concerned about the same things and I am not a free-trader either. I am for equitable trade. Something that doesn't exist today.
Oh, come on, that just a silly overreaction. If in 1980 the share of food imports were .001 percent and in 2000 they were 1 percent, would they rave about a 99,900% percent increase and say the sky is falling? lol The point is that 11.1 isn't far from 7.8 just like 1 percent wouldn't be much. It probably varies more than that from year to year.
Mine doesn't. Does your book, "Pat Buchanan's Economics Handbook," have a chapter titled "Nationalizing the Family Farm?"
A local Farm Bureau person told me several years ago that the U.S was a net importer of food. Carry Okie researched it and had a link to a web site ...United Nations if I remember right. The statistics included non-food agricultural commodities like cotton and tobacco, so the net tonnage was positive (ie we export more tons then we import). However, when one removes these non-food items, the U.S. is a net importer.
Regarding another commodity, U.S. lumber imports are over 40% from Canada alone, it would not surprise me if we now import half of the lumber utilized in this country. Not rocket science...all a government has to do is jack the cost of doing business here through the roof, and VIOLA! it is suddenly economically possible import lumber from New Zealand and Chili.
BTW, you are right about the goals of globalism.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
It's okay, they're leaving.
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