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California is the biggest producer of food in the US, by a huge margin (about 50% more than Iowa, the #2 producer). https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=1

California is the biggest producer of food in the US, by a huge margin (about 50% more than Iowa, the #2 producer). https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17844 https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17844 I would like to see how it breaks down by red vs. blue, and I suspect there might be a slight edge for team red, but California in particular fills an important niche of supplying most of the non-grain foods, and can produce food year round. However California is probably going to lose its status as #1 as aridification continues.

silisili 4y ago
This argument doesn't hold much water when the people in California making the food are overwhelmingly red themselves. What happens if they leave, or decide to make their own little state? We shouldn't be bragging about punishments of blue vs red at all, because should such a thing occur everyone is going to have a much worse quality of life, blue or red.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  The land makes the food, the people just tend the land. If the people move out new people move in to fill that vacuum. That's exactly what happens now with migrant labor.
  - dmitrygr 4y ago
    Do you also think that factories make widgets, and the people working there just press buttons? Text editors make software, and programmers just mash on keyboards? There’s a lot more to farming than tending to the land. Crops don’t magically grow. Your simplistic view of it is both insulting to those who farm and dangerous.
    - nostrademons 4y ago
      Once labor gets commoditized, yes. The factories do make the the widgets, with the people working there pushing buttons. That's why there's all this hand-wringing about immigration, cheap foreign competition, unions dissolving, worker bargaining power, and capitalist abuses. If the workers made the products they'd just find new factories and this wouldn't be an issue. Programmers for now do make the software, in that there's a dramatic difference in the ability of a good programmer vs. a mediocre programmer to actually complete a project, and they're compensated accordingly. That'll likely change in a decade or so, though. Then the software will be largely already written, and it'll be maintained by management structures with commodity programmers slotting into roles in the org chart. It's already happening for many roles. It's a perspective shift from "here's a laborer making a product" to "here's a role for how the product is made, and any number of different laborers could slot into it", and it happens when there are enough people with the skills to make the product that any one of them can slot into it.
Infernal 4y ago
So that 50% more is by revenue I think - probably difficult to find, if it even exists, but I'm curious what that table looks like sorted by calories instead of dollars.
- bmismyname 4y ago
  Good point. Another thing is that much of the big AG "food" crops (corn, soy, etc) are used for industrial purposes, such as cattle feed and ethanol.
- nebula8804 4y ago
  Thats tough to quantify. Are all calories equal? Middle America produces federally subsidized commercial corn used for HFCS, feedlots and "bio-fuels". First of all are those calories really "food" compared to what California grows? Maybe only in emergency situations (which is partially why it was subsidized in the first place). Second of all, in this hypothetical situation, you'd have to take away the federal subsidies anyway since the blue states are not paying anymore. How much of middle america goes bankrupt if this happens? Wouldn't that lower the production output numbers?
Turing_Machine 4y ago
> California is the biggest producer of food "Dollar value" and "calories" are two different things. California produces a lot of high-dollar-value luxury crops, but doesn't actually produce many of the calories that stand between the population and starvation. It doesn't even produce enough calories to feed itself.

silisili 4y ago

This argument doesn't hold much water when the people in California making the food are overwhelmingly red themselves. What happens if they leave, or decide to make their own little state? We shouldn't be bragging about punishments of blue vs red at all, because should such a thing occur everyone is going to have a much worse quality of life, blue or red.

nostrademons 4y ago
The land makes the food, the people just tend the land. If the people move out new people move in to fill that vacuum. That's exactly what happens now with migrant labor.
- dmitrygr 4y ago
  Do you also think that factories make widgets, and the people working there just press buttons? Text editors make software, and programmers just mash on keyboards? There’s a lot more to farming than tending to the land. Crops don’t magically grow. Your simplistic view of it is both insulting to those who farm and dangerous.
  - nostrademons 4y ago
    Once labor gets commoditized, yes. The factories do make the the widgets, with the people working there pushing buttons. That's why there's all this hand-wringing about immigration, cheap foreign competition, unions dissolving, worker bargaining power, and capitalist abuses. If the workers made the products they'd just find new factories and this wouldn't be an issue. Programmers for now do make the software, in that there's a dramatic difference in the ability of a good programmer vs. a mediocre programmer to actually complete a project, and they're compensated accordingly. That'll likely change in a decade or so, though. Then the software will be largely already written, and it'll be maintained by management structures with commodity programmers slotting into roles in the org chart. It's already happening for many roles. It's a perspective shift from "here's a laborer making a product" to "here's a role for how the product is made, and any number of different laborers could slot into it", and it happens when there are enough people with the skills to make the product that any one of them can slot into it.

Infernal 4y ago

So that 50% more is by revenue I think - probably difficult to find, if it even exists, but I'm curious what that table looks like sorted by calories instead of dollars.

bmismyname 4y ago
Good point. Another thing is that much of the big AG "food" crops (corn, soy, etc) are used for industrial purposes, such as cattle feed and ethanol.
nebula8804 4y ago
Thats tough to quantify. Are all calories equal? Middle America produces federally subsidized commercial corn used for HFCS, feedlots and "bio-fuels". First of all are those calories really "food" compared to what California grows? Maybe only in emergency situations (which is partially why it was subsidized in the first place). Second of all, in this hypothetical situation, you'd have to take away the federal subsidies anyway since the blue states are not paying anymore. How much of middle america goes bankrupt if this happens? Wouldn't that lower the production output numbers?

Turing_Machine 4y ago

> California is the biggest producer of food "Dollar value" and "calories" are two different things. California produces a lot of high-dollar-value luxury crops, but doesn't actually produce many of the calories that stand between the population and starvation. It doesn't even produce enough calories to feed itself.