2025 Fall Farm Outlook Lincoln Daily News Oct 2025 Page 15 second largest producer of meat in the world, producing over 47 million tons in 2023. Fruits and vegetables might not be so easily produced in the U.S., however. According to the USDA, Canada and Mexico provide a large amount of each to the U.S. every year. “Between 2007 and 2021, the percent of U.S. fresh fruit and vegetable availability supplied by imports grew from 50 to 60 percent for fresh fruit and from 20 to 38 percent for fresh vegetables.” The beginning of the USDA article cites imports as a key reason the U.S. is able to have fresh fruits and vegetables “year-round.” It seems likely, then, that the U.S. may be able to produce enough for Americans in certain seasons, but not year-round. The key to food, as is the key with other products that will be mentioned later, is that the U.S. is not able to produce enough of all products that are sold here to be 100 percent self-sufficient. Coffee is a great example of something that would become unavailable to most Americans if it were to no longer be imported. According to another article from the USDA, the U.S. produces a “minimal amount of coffee.” What the U.S. does produce is grown in Hawaii, but it accounts for less than one percent of how much the U.S. consumes each year. Most of the coffee that is consumed in the U.S. comes from countries such as Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, Vietnam, and Indonesia. The next problem for coffee comes from the fact that, outside of Hawaii, the U.S. does not really have anywhere with an appropriate climate to grow it, and certainly not year-round. Having the right climate is very important for coffee to grow, and with Americans consuming somewhere in the range of 677 million cups of coffee per year, the U.S. just does not have enough of that ‘right climate’ for Americans’ coffee demands. The final nail in the coffin for coffee, at least if the U.S. were to try to attempt to become self-sufficient in this sector, would be price.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzExODA=