Stop me if you’ve heard this story before: American industry is undercut by cheap, shoddy foreign competition, spurred on by politicians who look the other way. Any other day it could be auto manufacturers, or steel workers, or construction projects, but today the victim is America’s farmers and the beneficiaries are liberals wracked by fifty flavors of guilt.
That’s because the huge demand for organic food has produced a surge in grain imports that has destabilized the 3.2 million farmers who feed the nation each day. As a result, many American farmers are facing the prospect of failure.
The organic craze sweeping across the world has changed our food, perhaps permanently, and rarely for the better. The rush to eliminate pesticides and fertilizers (which have played a major role in boosting crop yields and reducing hunger world-wide) has led to nearly every food item under the sun receiving categorization as organic or non-organic.
Of course, there’s no consensus on what truly is organic — in fact, as little as ten percent of a food item needs to have organic material to be classified as such — which has led to a frenzy of companies pushing everything from organic baby formula to organic sea salt.
The result is massively inflated prices for food — as an example, a jar of organic almond butter at Sprouts farmers market stores costs twenty-five bucks — and an interest in cheap alternatives as hybrid-driving Democrats try to placate their roaring conscience without draining their wallet altogether.
Sales of organic food have risen ten percent in the past year, compared with less than one percent growth in food sales overall, reflecting a long-term trend towards the organic movement (in addition to a library of other placative descriptors, like fair-trade, non-GMO, free-range, and so on).
This crunch has fallen squarely upon the shoulders of American farmers, who cannot produce competitive organic grain (in addition to meat, dairy, and most other products) when other nations that lack safety standards or health agencies flood the market with their own harvest.
The price of organic corn, for instance, has dropped by about 30% during 2016 due to the huge influx of overseas grain, despite the fact that the United States produces nearly as much corn as the rest of the world combined. The same is true for organic soybeans, which have seen a 20% drop as the United States imported nearly half a million tons of the staple.
It’s a surprising turn-about for an industry that had previously been heavily reliant on the foreign market. Despite all the failings of NAFTA, the free-trade pact opened up the Mexican market to American corn, helping to feed a nation that had previously experienced food shortages on the regular.
Much of the American non-organic soybean crop, likewise, goes to Chinese markets to support the swelling livestock pens fueling the nation’s newfound hunger for meat. Where the United States’ crop exports succeed due to trust in our quality, organic food imports fail because there is little, if any, certainty about quality.
Much of the organic grain coming into the country originated in Eastern Europe, where lax standards (at best) produce food that could not possibly pass an FDA inspection. Yet without standards for labeling food as organic, foreign farmers need only promise that they did not use insecticide in order to justify doubling or even tripling the price of their harvest.
Blame for this trend falls on American liberals who happily pay out for fear-mongering. A study released after the election found that counties with a Whole Foods market went overwhelmingly for Hilary, while counties with a Cracker Barrel restaurant went overwhelmingly for Trump.
The Hilary voters who profess such an iron-clad belief in science are more than willing to give in to the terror that their children will consume pesticides, despite the fact that DDT is perfectly safe for human consumption.
In their zeal for organic food, as well as their ludicrous belief that vaccines cause autism, liberals are free to pick and choose when science applies. But they will not have to live with the consequences.
The American farming community may need help from the protectionist Trump administration in order to overcome this hurdle and compete against unfair global competition. Until they do, investors ought to stay clear of most agricultural commodities so long as foreign dumping continues to depress prices.
Regards,
Ethan Warrick
Editor
Wealth Authority
