Filed under: Politics | Tags: American Farmers, Shipping Abroad, Supply Chain
All those ships sitting off the Southern California coast waiting to get into port to unload, are apparently only half of the story. Once unloaded, the ships load up again with the produce from Americas vast farmlands to distribute to other countries all over the globe.That mess harms not only American shipping, but America’s farmers in a big way. I don’t know much of anything about what fresh crops are shipped to other countries, but America has vast acreages of very productive farms. Fresh produce has a shelf life that isn’t adaptable to sitting around a Southern California port, waiting for a ship. for very long. Fresh food crops can’t sit around long. Food spoils. It would be really interesting to see the movement of food crops around the globe. I don’t know much about how interconnected food crops are around the world and how dependent we are on each other. I hope that somebody who does know a lot will write about it.
I grew up in ranching country, where farm crops consisted almost entirely of hay to feed the cattle. Ranchers were usually able to sell any hay that was more than met their own needs, but it was the cattle that were the cash crop. There was always somebody to buy any excess hay, and some years when there was heavy snow, there was real major demand and scarcity. I remember one year when a heavy snow came unexpected and early. We tried to buy some hay for the deer, but it simply was not available. Too much demand to feed the productive cattle. Deer tried to survive on the young willow shoots along the river, but most ended up starving. So while we are aware of all those ships waiting to unload there’s a whole another side of the story that we mostly are not recognizing.
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