Feeding the World? We Aren’t Even Feeding Ourselves: U.S. Ag Imports Reach Record High

Whether you live in farm country or in the city, you’ve probably noticed the quality of produce at your local supermarket has deteriorated over the years. These days, our “fresh” produce isn’t actually fresh at all — much of it has been picked too early, shipped across land and sea, and delivered to your grocer with a “Product of Mexico” or “Product of China” sticker tacked onto it.

As Farm Action’s Angela Huffman recently explained on CNBC, the United States is growing less and less of its own food and is becoming increasingly dependent on foreign countries to feed itself as a result.

The U.S. has been a proud agricultural powerhouse, consistently running an agricultural trade surplus. But in 2019, for the first time in more than 50 years, the mighty U.S. agriculture system ran an agricultural trade deficit, importing more than it exported: Though we racked up a $9.7 billion agricultural trade surplus with the rest of the world, our $11 billion agricultural trade deficit with Mexico resulted in a $1.3 billion deficit overall.

Years later, this imbalance has become a trend, with the U.S. running an agricultural trade deficit for five of the last seven years. The projection for 2025 is worse than ever, with a deficit of $45.5 billion.