Small farmer, crop scientist, & ex-farm worker & crop scientist. Here to talk food, agriculture, and money.
patreon.com/farmtotaber
look guys I finally made a nice video about nice things
(Costco is legitimately great! It also does a lot of the heavy lifting to keep the US food system safe & sanitary, filling holes in state & federal food safety enforcement.)
Did a video on what farm history can tell us about trade wars, and taking agriculture's customers & labor for granted.
Recorded at an old Confederate bullet factory personally torn down by Sherman himself.
@sarahtaber yep, I hear that. I'm in Australia and I just watched China pivot from US beef and pork, to Aussie beef and pork, without so much as a flinch.
I hope they don't find out lamb, I don't want to pay $100/kg for it! 😄
In summary, trade wars & threatening to withhold your bulk export goods is a terrible way to get what you want from the world.
All US farmers are doing with this trade war is make openings for other countries.
Because crop exports can be replaced a lot faster than you'd think. And so can we.
British textile manufacturers just wanted cotton. They didn't care where it came from.
So when the South threw a tantrum & refused to ship it, thinking it'd force the British Empire to fight to get it back, the Brits just said "lol no" & started buying it from their new friends in Egypt.
Britain also wanted CHEAP cotton. And fighting wars is very expensive. Especially when you're already busy subjugating your own global empire.
Egypt jumped on the opportunity. Their govt invested in large-scale cotton production immediately and went so all-in on cotton, they stopped growing much of anything else.
The modern Egyptian cotton industry? Made possible by the US Civil War.
But more importantly, lots of other places around the world could grow huge amounts of cotton. They just didn't yet.
Up until 1861 US cotton had been so cheap, there was no way for anyone else to grow cotton competitively.
All that changed when the South stopped exporting!
Here's the thing: the British Empire had abolished slavery in 1833 & was still feeling very holier-than-thou about it in the 1860s.
They weren't about going to war to save some other country's slavers from themselves.
But that's exactly what the US Confederacy did. They stopped shipping cotton to the British Empire, AKA they cut off their own main source of export revenue.
They started a very expensive trade war, right as they started a very expensive civil war.
Now if "We can get the British Empire to fight our wars for us... by starting a trade war with them!" sounds stupid as hell, that's because it is.
What can I say. Growing up on plantations surrounded by people they could beat & threaten without consequences? It didn't build good negotiating skills.
sortius