Item — HN Reader

Because it's objectively cheaper to outsource food production to countries with low cost of living. In an economically efficient world, all food in North America would be coming from Africa instead of going to Africa (see Dead Aid).

But if that ever actually happened, those countries could blockade the United States and cut off the food supply. It would be a shitshow. Imagine the 1970s oil crisis, but instead of being unable to drive anywhere, mass famines occurred.

In Canada, we don't use subsidies for the dairy market. We use "supply management" where we make it difficult to import butter or milk and ban farmers from producing too much of it. This keeps the prices artificially high which allows for farmers to continue domestic production in a HCOL country. However, 4 sticks of butter costs $6.

2 comments

It’s objectively cheaper to outsource software development to countries with lower costs of living too. How’s that working out?

It's working out great for me, actually, as the entire Canadian tech industry is based on outsourcing. We're less of a national security risk as an American client state.

For critical infrastructure though, outsourcing is the wrong move. This is because the consequences of failure are borne by society instead of the corporation.

If Americans were banned from all social media tomorrow, realistically there wouldn't be mass rioting and civil unrest. Contrast if you found out tomorrow that the USA only has 7 days worth of food for all its citizens, and no more is coming. Are you going to start killing people to boost your odds of survival?

No, I’m going to eat one last steak, look lovingly at my supply of bulk dried beans and rice, thank goodness for the enormous amount of shelf-stable food sitting in storage across the supply chain, and wait til somebody dusts off their plow and uses that vast quantity of good land that, in this counterfactual, has been left fallow for some reason…

Labor is far from the only input into agriculture. The US’ advantages in arable land acreage, agricultural technology, and chemical inputs seem sufficiently efficient that the US is (and long has been) a net exporter of agricultural commodities.

One guy in the air-conditioned cab of his fancy tractor hauling his 40-meter-wide planter or 186-liter-per-second combine [0] can do the work of hundreds of his manual-farmhand counterparts without even taking out his earbuds.

Do you imagine that you would start “killing people to boost your odds of survival”?

[0] https://www.deere.ca/en/products/planting-equipment/db120-48... and https://www.deere.com/en/harvesting/x-series-combines/

I would imagine people would go into your house + every warehouse, and just start looting everything. Most people do not have a large supply of non-perishable goods and will likely try to take yours.

My point is the "vast quantity of good land" the USA has would be useless in a short-term famine scenario. It takes months to grow food. If there's a scenario in which the USA has outsourced its entire food supply overseas, and that food supply is cut off, unless there's a 3-4 month stockpile of food for every person in America and the USA figures out how to restart its entire farming system in a week, people are dying en masse.

Even if that occurs, there's still going to be riots like COVID-style runs on toilet paper.

That's why food self-sufficiency is critical to national security.

Yes we obviously need domestic food production. But do we need small farms that are essentially a hobby? “Supply management” as described is a subsidy because it artificially increases prices.

We should be encouraging small farms, hobby or not, because diversity breeds innovation and durability. We have propped up big ag too much. Subsidies, to any sector, should always trail off as size increases to encourage diversity and durability of that industry.