We import more vegetables, fruits, beef, dairy products, beverages and sugar than we export. Idaho's famous potato is being challenged by Canadian producers, and fast-food restaurant French fries are being produced in China, India and Russia. Perhaps the most provocative forecast of U.S. agriculture's 21st century future is by Steven Blank, an agricultural economist at the University of California at Davis. America will waddle on. The U.S. economy no longer needs agriculture and is rapidly outgrowing it.
Voters support urban positions over rural interests.
Suburbanites are fed up with odors, dust and toxins from the old farm down the road. No one is buying the farmer's sob story anymore. Instead, we buy imported food. Stewart Truelson of the American Farm Bureau Federation says no great nation can retain its position without a secure food supply. Independent farmers in Iowa and elsewhere increasingly are surrounded by huge hog lots run by corporations and by fellow farmers whose operations are tied to agribusiness through contracts.