I am sure they will not ignore the spin-off data if the latter is the case--which is likely.
We are horribly dependant on the manufacturing facilities of other nations for a great deal now, but the production of food has always been a strong point for us. We have consistently had one of the most safe domestic food supplies in the world. Only the introduction of foreign materials at some level has created a problem, along with the increase in procesed food components rather than whole food.
Most of this material was intended ultimately for animal consumption, but we need to be careful what we feed the animals who feed us.
I am a farmer and I know what regulation and inflation has done to the prices of our inputs. We literally spend 10Xs what we spent when we started farming and for the most part prices for our crops are actually lower. Our only saving grace is a niche crop and the new higher yielding cotton varieties and technology. We're in the process of re-mortgaging our farm...again. Thank God land prices in California and Arizona are driving speculators and people who sold their farms for obscene amounts of money our way so it will appraise well, I hope because it's April 24 and we don't have an operating loan yet, we're operating on charge accounts at this moment.
I think we're getting pretty close to the point that we will not be able to meet Americas food needs. I've always said that the time would come when farmers would be respected, that time isn't here yet but it will come. There are no young farmers out there anymore and the land is going for housing developments. In our county we have 5% of the farmers we had when we started 30 yrs ago (and 90% of them are over 60) and 50% or less of the land being farmed. We'll make it a few more years but I'd sell out to a developer in a second for the right price. Farming is too damned hard and the stress is even worse.