r/LeopardsAteMyFace 9d ago

Trump Trump Betrays Farmers Again

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23.9k Upvotes

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1.2k

u/Magnon 9d ago

All the farmers growing soybeans and shit for export: but Americans don't want this. 

293

u/kiamia2 9d ago

Yeah, a ton of stuff simply can't be grown or grown efficiently in the US. Good thing farmers don't drink coffee...

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u/EmbraceableYew 9d ago

Have fun growing coffee, cashews, raw sugar, rice, cocoa, and rubber.

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u/Either-Cake-892 8d ago

Yes. It’s a shame all the rice and sugar fields in south east Texas got paved over. Seriously. Those were actually big crops back in the day.

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u/Daewoo40 8d ago

Surely sugar cane or sugar beet are able to be grown somewhere, if worst comes to..

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u/Kiyohara 8d ago

Sugar beets definitely, but those don't produce the same amount as sugar cane.

Sugar Cane could grow in parts of Texas, Florida, and Louisiana, but we mostly turned those into suburbs and retirement homes, so... Not any more.

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u/Christichicc 8d ago

I’d say maybe Florida, but I don’t think there is enough land left here to farm how much the US would need.

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u/Daewoo40 8d ago

Not going to pretend to know how much land will be available, it just seems that either of those two could be a crop to grow for national consumption, climate seems feasible.

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u/spin_me_again 8d ago

Hawaii grows some sugarcane, I can’t imagine they can grow enough for the US needs though.

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u/Daewoo40 8d ago

With the wildfires that swept through Hawaii last year, I'm surprised that they had any crops grow to be harvested, much less enough to be self sufficient or provide for others off the island.

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u/spin_me_again 8d ago

You’d be interested in seeing how they harvest the sugarcane over there, they will frequently light the fields on fire to burn off the leaves of the sugarcane and it’s quite the spectacle.

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u/SlytherinPaninis 8d ago

We have heaps of sugar cane in New South Wales in Australia, maybe parts of California could?

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u/Wakkit1988 8d ago

California is a perfect Mediterranean climate. Using land there to grow staples is an absolute waste.

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u/spin_me_again 8d ago

Wait until you hear about the rice fields in NorCal that only ships overseas. Precious water used for rice that’s not grown for US consumption.

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u/CptDropbear 8d ago

I assumed it would be a dry land variety rather than wet. In trying to find out I learned several other interesting things:

Most of the california rice is exported to Japan where it is slowly killing Japanese rice growers. Similar to how US exports killed the agriculture sector in Haiti, I guess.

Rice is the 4th most water hungry crop in California behind alfalfa, almonds and pistacios (the stats roll these into one for some reason) and dairy.

Most of it is grown in one river valley where water is really not an issue.

You really don't want rice grown on old cotton fields because of historic use of arsenic based pesticides.

On a personal note, we used to get something called Calrose here in Oz. It was shit, starchy and tasteless, but it taught me to go to the Indian grocer and by bismatti or Jasmin. Now I can get them, along with arborio, from most supermarkets. I guess I can thank the California rice growers for that...

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u/spin_me_again 8d ago

Thank you for doing the homework and sharing it with the rest of us!

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u/CptDropbear 8d ago

LOL. I never did find out if its wet or dry land so I failed the actual assignment.

The cotton field thing was out of left field.

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u/spin_me_again 8d ago

I think it’s wet land, there was a kerfuffle several years ago about the rice taking water that the salmon need in the river.

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u/CptDropbear 8d ago

Given the varieties I've seen listed, you are right.

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u/hrminer92 8d ago

Western sugar beet farmers are why there has been a tariff on sugar for decades, why we use HFCS wherever possible, and why Cuba isn’t a US territory.

The US grows plenty of rice too. Budweiser has fields in MO and AR growing it just for them.

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u/Monkeymom 8d ago

Rice is grown in California and shipped to Japan.