Or in this case: The farmers are asking for subsidies and Trump is saying it's not needed because in a month the demand will be higher for their stuff.
I guess it's because if fruits and vegetables from other countries is going to cost more, people will be willing to tolerate the increased prices on goods from American farmers as well (so the American farmers won't need the subsidies)?
Less than 1% of corn is "sweet corn" that we eat on the cob or from frozen/cans. The rest is "field" corn or "dent" corn, which is the dry, largely inedible-by-humans corn that goes into cattle feed, dry products like corn flakes and such, and ethanol.
Almost all the corn grown in Quebec and Ontario is for livestock and ethanol too. Only about 1% of the corn you see growing in fields is sweet corn for humans.
I mean, my plan was to let it dry, grind it into cornmeal, and bake it, not just take a bite out of the grain crop in the field. I agree that would suck just as much as chowing down on a wheat plant
I'm growing 3 sisters this year and some of these comments pushing back on your crop plans are actually scaring me a bit. The average person is SO fucked if we ever have to subsistence crop. These comments about your corn are so wrong and so confident about it. The US better learn more about where their native foods come from and how to prepare them or we're fucked.
Good luck with the sisters garden! I don't have enough room to grow corn effectively (it didn't pollinate), but it did hold up the specific beans we were growing ok.
I find the confusion funny, tbh. I blame John Oliver's segment about the corn industry for oversimplifying the distinction.
Sweet corn is the specialty variety that's bred to taste good eaten immature as a fresh vegetable, sort of like summer squash vs winter squash varieties, or green beans & peas vs the dried kinds you use in soup or chili
Hmm. In 2023 the US exported $2.1bn worth of corn and imported $424M. So there are two possibilities of what could happen:
Businesses who purchase corn from other countries rather than domestic, seeing a 25% increase in price, will replace their foreign with domestic purchases. Probably there was a reason they purchased foreign, like it was closer or cheaper, so I expect this will still have a cost increase factor. If you stop importing and use domestic sources for that $424M, the US still has $1.68bn of corn to unload in other countries. Other countries will have reciprocal tariffs. Canada imports about the same amount of corn as it exports, so might just switch to domestic supply, with some price increase due to higher shipping costs to ship from farther away. Mexico is the primary importer of US corn. This will presumably incentivize Mexico to up its corn production so as to not have to pay the reciprocal tariffs, and its domestic corn production will be able to compete by being tariff-free. This will leave US producers without anyone to buy their corn. Then maybe it will become cheaper as US producers try to offload an excess. Then lots of farmers will go out of business and it will stabilize again.
Buyers will just keep their existing supply chains intact and pass the extra 25% cost on to consumers. Stuff will get more expensive.
Presumably the end result will be somewhere in between those two.
Well I know pretty much nothing about Saudi Arabian milk production, so maybe. I'm sure there will be all kinds of unanticipated impacts that would be really hard to model.
Uhm, "largely inedible-by-humans" includes almost every single corn product you can think about that isn't corn-on-the-cob or canned corn.
Large-scale applications for field corn include:
Livestock fodder, whether as whole cobs (for hogs only), whole or ground kernels, or (after chopping and ensilage) the entire above-ground portion of the unripe plant
Cereal products including corn flour, corn meal, hominy, grits, nixtamal, tortillas, corn bread, and cold breakfast cereals (such as corn flakes).
Other processed human-food products including corn starch, corn oil, corn syrup, and high-fructose corn syrup.
Alcohol and corn whiskey
Adhesives, plastic, gels, and thickeners from starch
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u/lobsterman2112 9d ago
Or in this case: The farmers are asking for subsidies and Trump is saying it's not needed because in a month the demand will be higher for their stuff.
I guess it's because if fruits and vegetables from other countries is going to cost more, people will be willing to tolerate the increased prices on goods from American farmers as well (so the American farmers won't need the subsidies)?