No Imports, No Food: The Food System Divorce that Deserves More Attention

For decades, there has been a growing divide between American farmland and American diets. In the last 5 years, this trend crossed some critical thresholds catapulting the ag land-rich US into new net food importer territory. This blog post is an adaptation of a report and webinar prepared for Farm Action. 

I’ve been hearing the word “divorce” a lot lately across relatively diverse food and ag spaces from the crunchy granola, non-GMO, organic end of the spectrum to meetings of the mainstream commodity boards, to food industry gatherings. Divorce is a strong word. One that elicits an emotional reaction in a lot of audience members, which probably makes it a powerful choice for speakers seeking to leave an impression. 

It certainly worked for me. I’ve found myself mulling over this word choice weeks and even months later. Why “divorce?” Why such a triggering word imbued with undertones of blame? What does divorce even mean? Who’s really divorcing who in the food system and why?

As I often do when I get stuck on a word, I looked into the etymology of “divorce” to really get clear on what the word means and implies. “Divorce” is an old word that shares Old French and ultimately Latin roots with divert, "change the direction or course of; change the aim or destination of, turn aside or away." 

“Divorce” differs from “divert" in that it was explicitly about the turning away from the legal bond of marriage, apparently originally a gendered term referring to “leaving one’s husband” and then more broadly, “to put away or abandon (a spouse).” 

Whew, as a woman, a wife, and a child of divorce, what a loaded term?!

Now that we’ve unpacked that baggage, I think it’s important to acknowledge that divorce in modern day terms, while often a painful process, is not altogether bad. Divorce is also often a way out of a bad place to a better place. When two married people come to understand that they need to go in different directions, divorce can be liberation and trying to stick it out, a legit pit of hell. The divorce itself may be an unpleasant passage, but on the other side there is often a raft of good things - new expanded, blended families can be beautiful. Just ask my kids how lucky they feel to have not just 4, but 8 delightful grandparents.

But, let’s get back to this food system divorce. This is often raised as a divorce between farmers and eaters. A divorce between urban and rural. A divorce between those who produce and those who consume. A divorce between the land and the people. This divorce is not a neutral or a mutual turning away. It’s a mean, messy divorce and the eaters, the urbanites, the consumers are consistently painted as the turners, the abandoners, the selfish wife that left her blameless husband.

Sitting with and digging into my discomfort with this “food system divorce,” I’ve come to appreciate that discomfort stems from a gnawing sense that this figurative divorce is not the divorce that has happened here. There has been a divorce. There is no doubt or disputing that. The degree to which modern Americans, to include most farmers, are disconnected from those who tend, harvest, process, package, distribute, sell, and serve the majority of the food that we eat is vast. Yet, just as in most divorces, who is to blame for this divorce is more murky than the indisputable reality that most American farmland is indeed divorced from feeding Americans.

Wait. What? American farms aren’t Americans’ primary source of food?

Nope, Americans mostly eat imported food crops grown on farms in Mexico, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Honduras, Ecuador, and even farther afield. 

Across America’s nearly 900 million acres of farmland, where vast acreage once yielded a bounty of food, a concerning trend has emerged. Over the course of the last Farm Bill, from 2018 to 2022, the harvested acreage of key food crops plummeted to record lows. This decline wasn't due to lack of demand or environmental disasters alone; imports increasingly displaced American food crops were a contributing factor. 

The 2018 $428B Farm Bill, which was supposed to support domestic food supply and food access, was highly ineffective. By 2022, we had a more than $30 billion trade deficit for produce and nearly 34 million Americans remained food insecure and domestic harvested acreage for almost all veggies, fruit, grain, and pulse food crops fell to all-time lows.

How has farmland use and food crop production changed over the course of the most recent Farm Bill? 

One stark illustration of this shift is the precipitous decline in harvested wheat acreage, which reached its lowest point since 1888. Despite near-record high prices for wheat, drought and labor challenges persisted in key growing regions. Additionally, producers grappled with soaring input costs, making domestic wheat production less profitable. This combination of factors has led to a significant reduction in American wheat production, a trend mirrored by other staple food crops like rice and peanuts.

What is the agricultural trade balance and how has it changed?

Another facet of this issue is the production of specialty food crops - vegetables, melons, fruits, and nuts. Over the last five years, in particular, and going back longer to the 1980s or 1930s even for some crops, we've witnessed a prolonged collapse in domestic production as imports gradually displaced them in the American food supply. This phenomenon resulted in a growing trade deficit in agriculture. While imports surged, the production of these vital food items struggled to compete, as the American agriculture industry increasingly abandoned food crop production in favor of corn and soy production for biofuel and feed markets.

How much land would need to be transitioned to food crop production to balance the agricultural trade?

Balancing the more than $30 billion produce trade deficit with domestic production would require a relatively modest amount of land. Estimates suggest that transitioning just 3-8 million additional acres to produce production, depending on the crop mix, could potentially offset this deficit. 

To put this into perspective, this represents a mere 0.3%-0.8% of total US farmland. This translates to 3.5-4.4 million acres, generating sales equivalent to the 2022 US produce trade deficit of $32.9 billion. However, despite having over 900 million acres of farmland, the historical trend has been a continuous reduction in acreage dedicated to these crops. The question then arises, is this achievable, and what would be the economic implications?

In essence, more land is left unused each year than what would be needed to balance the trade deficit, representing over $30 billion worth of production potential for American communities. This highlights a significant opportunity for American agriculture to enhance its domestic production of essential food items and address the growing trade deficit in agricultural goods.

In the ever-evolving landscape of American agriculture, it's become evident that imported goods increasingly dominate the market, challenging the sustainability of domestic food crop production. As the Farm Bill discussions for the coming years take shape, it's imperative for American ag policy organizations, farmland investors, and the broader food and ag industry to address these issues head-on. 

The "No Farms, No Food" mantra may need an adaptation – "No Imports, No Food." 

While there may be some free trade advocates who might argue that this modern divorce has silver linings – Peruvian blueberries on grocery store shelves in January for instance – the structure of this separation seems demonstrably unhealthy on the whole to me. American diets and food security have not been helped by this divorce. Nor has soil health, water quality, or biodiversity benefited as America’s ag lands are increasingly allocated to just two crops: corn and soybeans. Even as the climate smart ag cover crop crowd gathers steam, and studies and publications celebrate the very real increase of cover cropped acres over the last decade, these gains have not counteracted the loss in acres covered by actual crops resulting in a net decline in covered cropland. Until we reconnect our use of farmland with our need for food, climate smart ag initiatives will remain climate mirages, not yielding climate smart diets. 

We need to rebalance the relationship between farmland and food in the US. Making this relationship healthier requires we all take a hard look in the mirror – or into the trade numbers or how we actually use land in the US or the origin labels on our food at the grocery store – and acknowledge the divorce that has happened in the American food system. A divorce between diets and farmland. 

As I wrote in a recent comment on the National Nature Assessment, “food security in the US is increasingly unrelated to US farmland.” For the health of American people, land, water, biodiversity, and the economy, it’s critical we work to recouple farmland and food security. The good news is we still have more than enough farmland. We just need slightly more of it to grow food. How and if we make that happen is up to all of us.