If the whole world attacks the US, can the US survive?

Have you ever been to the UK? If so, you would know that there is huge amounts of unused farmable land.

My families farm is 250 acres in size. 5 acres is used for Barley, 2 for Potatoes and the rest for about 120 cows and 150 sheep!

 

I lived in the UK for four years. The farms there are tiny. In the U.S. many farms and ranches are measured in the thousands of acres. You can't appreciate this until you drive through the great plains states and see literally nothing but wheat and crops for 3 days of driving. You got 95MPH on a straight flat highway without any terrain features but crops all day long.

 

So the British, French, Spanish and Mexicans don't ring a bell? And what about the US civil war?

 

I am not so sure there is huge amounts of unused farmable land, if you take into account that the UK still needs wood, roads, houses, and we don't plant 2 crops a year, because it uses up the soil, but that's why I count British food as the best in the world, and why if I can buy British I do. I wish the Americans could stop thinking bigger is better. Plus the UK could cut and kickout all the people that shouldn't be here, that should save some food.

 

Yes, I have. But that does not mean there is enough farmland to make up for the deficit in loss of food imports.

And yea, 150 cows and sheep. A lot of heards in the US are measured in the thousands. Texas alone has over 13 million. California over 5 million. England around 2 million.

And that is just beef cattle. The UK has had shrinking herd sizes for years. This has especially become true in the dairy industry.

http://www.dairyco.org.uk/datum/on-farm-data/cow-numbers/uk-cow-numbers.aspx

And even such staples as milk are imported into the UK.

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2009-05-14c.274622.h

To the tune of over 134 million liters.

And yea, I love hearing people talk about how they do not buy imported food. Really? So you eat absolutely nothing with sugar in it? Or coffee? Tea? Because those are not grown in England, it is all imported.

Sure, the bread may be baked in England, but where did the ingredients to make the bread come from? I bet a lot of them were imported.

 

north-American farms particularly grain crops like wheat are tremendously inefficient and underused...small intensively farmed plots produce far more but are economically inefficient and labour intensive...

 

I myself only by meat from Britain with some salt, bread from ASDA, black pud, UK jams, butter, ice cream and soup make for my veg patch. But other things like peanutbutter, and cereals are American. I also like a Chinese or Indian from time to time, or some chips from the chipe, and I have a KFC or McD's every sunday.

Things do grow in the Sahara, they just need water.

Is the US also a net exporter of timber?

 

You just reinforced my point. We buy outside because it is cheaper. The Uk agricultural industry has shrunk because of this. We can be self sufficient if need be.

 

UK hasn't been self sufficient for at least 200 years. The German proved that in the two world war. Both time you were on the verge of losing it when the U-Boat attacked the food and raw material convoys from abroad.

UK natural ressources are just about tapped out, like a big chunk of Europe. You spent it all on silly fratricide wars for centuries. Contrast that with North America that is mostly still untapped.

 

that's not the case at all...human resources were directed towards war industry and away from food and raw material production...the same happened in canada as women were recruited into previous male occupation as men were directed to war occupations....

 

It's about economics. The U.S. could use its land more efficiently if it made economic sense. It doesn't have to so it doesn't.

 

absolutely...

 

You dont get this at all, do you?

There is massive un-used resource available, because we can buy cheaper than we can make. We have a minimum wage that many others don't.

Its quite simple

 

Pretty much like it's oil reserves.

The US still has the largest untapped oil reserves in the world. However, it is generally cheaper to import it, so they remain untapped. But at need, production could be quickly expanded.

 

Where are the cows and land and farmers going to come from? Are you just going to take somebodies country estate away from them, and put somebody on the land who knows nothing of farming other then what they learned in some 9 month school?

And it takes normally 2-3 years for a farm to become really profitable. The first year is spent just getting everything ready, clearing the land, applying the right chemicals to prepare the ground for planting. Then there is the machinery. Is there enough machinery (and pesticides, fertilizer, and seed and livestock) ready for such a giant increase in production?

Increasing farming is not like dropping in a new engine. During the World Wars, all over the UK and US you had "Victory Gardens", to help replace the production lost and lack of imports.

And once again "Minimum Wage". That has nothing to do with this at all. Commodities (which most food staples falls under) follows the international markets. Just like gold or oil or pork backs, they are sold at what the current market price is, reguardless of anything else. And as of today, it is currently $7.34 a bushel ($269.69 a ton) for wheat. And corn is at at $6.44 (not to long ago we had a record high of $7.65 due to the loss of production to make biofuels).

It does not matter what the "minimum wage" is. People pay what the market price is, period. Mimimum wage could be $1 an hour, it could be $15 an hour, the price of commodities like wheat and corn and potatoes and gold and oil is still going to be at the set market price. So that is a straw man argument that is so easily busted it is not even funny.

And by the way, that price is not even for wheat you can buy today, but for wheat you can buy in May. Commodities are sold on what is known as the "futures market". Most are sold on 60 or 90 day "futures" delivery.

If the US drops out of international trading, expect that to skyrocket. That $7.34 you pay for May wheat would suddenly jump to $10+ for June if the US stopped selling. And expect July to be even higher.

 

The UK has used up 80% of it's land resouces, and 45% of off shore resources, so their isn't huge untapped resources. As the UK is small US huge. EU, China and India can't really get more out of their land and sea than they are getting now. The US can and it's now doing so more than every before. But for Americans to say the world can't make up for the lose in US exports is wrong. It would take some time, 5 years in my view, but it could be done. Mean while the US will have lost it's export market, and since their isn't the demand in the US their economy would be hit hard and their would by millions more put out of work.

 

Does the US have enough oil and gas to meet demand, right away, no. It would take 5 years for the US to get production to where demand is now.

 

the largest farm/ranch in Canada is about 781 sq miles, I think the largest in the world is in the USA at about 1,200 sq miles....Luxembourg is about 1000 sq miles...

 

Ivolga, a farming conglomerate which controls 1.5m hectares of land across Russia and Kazakhstan, is presently negotiating with Royal Bank of Scotland, which leads its creditors, to restructure a $300m loan it arranged in 2007.

The company's immense holding, an area a third the size of Wales, easily outstrips that of El Tejar, the Argentine conglomerate which is the largest farm in the Western hemisphere, with 1.1m hectares under cultivation. Analysts estimate that a sale could value the farm at £500m-£1bn.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/...lga-puts-worlds-biggest-farm-up-for-sale.html

The Russian farm is about 5 times the size of your farm in America and the Argentinian farm is about 3.5 times the size.

 

the difference being that american and canadian farm are each owned by one family where as those you mentioned are corporations...

 

So? You were claiming that the biggest farm in the world was in America,it is not.

 

That isn't a family run farm. However this is the way things are going and how the world would make up of the lose in US food exports.

 

It's not a farm, it's a company that buys up land. We have them here, they are very different from normal farms, they hve the best equipment, many more workers and grow food in a different way.

 

yup, there's a difference between a family running a farm as a company for a tax advantages and a corporation...

 

This was about whether or not the world could live without US food exports. Answer = Yes. Easily!

This is moving onto some other debate, whereby, again, the Americans seem to feel they hold all the cards!