3 ms·

I would guess that you are massively out of touch with how much agriculture there is in America.

ben_w 8y ago
Without googling, I would estimate 50% by land area, between 1% and 5% of GDP. As America is about 5% of the world population, it wouldn’t significantly alter everyone else’s food production to supply you, leaving only the question of transport logistics. The frozen pizza right in front of me is 240 cal per hundred grams; assume the average American consumes 3000 cal per day and that pizza is a representative calorie density, 1.25kg per person per day = 148 million metric tons per year. Googling now, USA ports handle 2.3 billion tons per year [1], so that’s fine. Internal transport I don’t even have to think about because you must already have it in place or you’d already be starving because you couldn’t get the food from your own farms to your own shops. [1] Figure 3-2 https://www.bts.gov/sites/bts.dot.gov/files/docs/browse-statistical-products-and-data/port-performance/216906/bts-ppfsp-ar-congress-2017.pdf#page28 https://www.bts.gov/sites/bts.dot.gov/files/docs/browse-stat...
yellowstuff 8y ago
It's about 1% of GDP and employs less than 2% of the population.
- war1025 8y ago
  Wikipedia says 922 million acres of land are used for agriculture in the United States, or about 40% of the total area of the country. I would guess that you'd have a hard time finding that much spare land lying around. Particularly in places that have the soil and infrastructure needed to support farming.
  - yellowstuff 8y ago
    The population of the US is only 330 million. It's a net exporter of food, and Americans eat much more meat than most of the world, but even if you round up to the equivalent of feeding an extra billion people it looks like it's within the realm of possibility to replace all that agriculture: https://www.livescience.com/16493-people-planet-earth-support.html https://www.livescience.com/16493-people-planet-earth-suppor... And this article claims that the limiting factor is transportation infrastructure, not food production: https://www.theguardian.com/preparing-for-9-billion/2017/sep/13/population-feed-planet-2050-cold-chain-environment https://www.theguardian.com/preparing-for-9-billion/2017/sep... If that's the case then it seems like it's definitely possible. The US has good transportation infrastructure.

Without googling, I would estimate 50% by land area, between 1% and 5% of GDP. As America is about 5% of the world population, it wouldn’t significantly alter everyone else’s food production to supply you, leaving only the question of transport logistics. The frozen pizza right in front of me is 240 cal per hundred grams; assume the average American consumes 3000 cal per day and that pizza is a representative calorie density, 1.25kg per person per day = 148 million metric tons per year. Googling now, USA ports handle 2.3 billion tons per year [1], so that’s fine. Internal transport I don’t even have to think about because you must already have it in place or you’d already be starving because you couldn’t get the food from your own farms to your own shops. [1] Figure 3-2 https://www.bts.gov/sites/bts.dot.gov/files/docs/browse-statistical-products-and-data/port-performance/216906/bts-ppfsp-ar-congress-2017.pdf#page28 https://www.bts.gov/sites/bts.dot.gov/files/docs/browse-stat...

yellowstuff 8y ago

It's about 1% of GDP and employs less than 2% of the population.

war1025 8y ago
Wikipedia says 922 million acres of land are used for agriculture in the United States, or about 40% of the total area of the country. I would guess that you'd have a hard time finding that much spare land lying around. Particularly in places that have the soil and infrastructure needed to support farming.
- yellowstuff 8y ago
  The population of the US is only 330 million. It's a net exporter of food, and Americans eat much more meat than most of the world, but even if you round up to the equivalent of feeding an extra billion people it looks like it's within the realm of possibility to replace all that agriculture: https://www.livescience.com/16493-people-planet-earth-support.html https://www.livescience.com/16493-people-planet-earth-suppor... And this article claims that the limiting factor is transportation infrastructure, not food production: https://www.theguardian.com/preparing-for-9-billion/2017/sep/13/population-feed-planet-2050-cold-chain-environment https://www.theguardian.com/preparing-for-9-billion/2017/sep... If that's the case then it seems like it's definitely possible. The US has good transportation infrastructure.