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'I've Never Seen Anything Like It': Trump Policies Leave US Farmers in Dire Straits
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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No, you're not. The average US consumer, even those who are desperately poor, still has significantly more buying power than the vast majority of the planet. A collapse in American agriculture will just mean a vast upswing in food imports, because for most of the world it will always be more profitable to sell that food to a US grocery chain than it will be to sell it locally. This will increase costs for US consumers, and push more Americans into poverty, but it won't cause a famine in the USA.
What you are well on your way towards is causing famines across vast portions of the world that aren't you. Famines that Americans will barely even notice, much less care about.
Yeah poor people can just make more money to buy the more expensive food, it's genius
I think they are saying that our poor people already have "more money," at least relative to others who might get that food.
And the bug you describe is also a feature if you're the greedy fucker at the top trying to take advantage of desperate people.
Show me in my previous comment where I said that.
My point was not "Americans will be OK." I explicitly said that a collapse of American agriculture would push many more Americans into poverty.
But poverty is not famine. As awful as poverty is, famine is actually, somehow, worse. Poverty kills people, and in the scenario imagined it would kill many more people, but the absolute worst impacts would still be felt in places much further afield. America's failure would create destructive ripple effects across the world.
IDK, there are already a lot of people hanging on by a thread in the US. A collapse in domestic production that leads to higher prices will push more people under the "secure" line. I think it'll also cause food shortages worldwide but I think you're overestimating how many Americans will be insulated.
Yes, I believe I covered that when I said "and push more Americans into poverty".
I'm not ignoring the plight of those people for whom starvation would be a very real threat in this scenario. But that's not the same thing as famine, and thinking that it is reflects a uniquely American level of isolation from the realities of the world. Poverty is terrifying - I've experienced it myself - but it is an entirely different order of magnitude from famine.
I know people who've experienced famine. I know people who've told me stories about taking a shit, and then immediately scooping it up and eating it just to sate the desparate, unbearable need to have some kind of food in their stomach. That's the level of insanity famine drives you to. It's a scale of hunger you and I can't even comprehend.
Nowhere in my previous comment did I say "It will be OK if American agriculture collapses." It would be awful. Many people would die, many more would suffer. But the absolute worst of that suffering wouldn't happen in the US, it would happen in other parts of the world that most Americans can't even name.
I don't know what the odds are on the US or a part of the US reaching the technical definition of famine, I'm just saying I wouldn't put it in the "definitely not happening" category. And it wouldn't be because there's not enough food available, more like the government is actively aggravating domestic food production and international trade and they're bumbling morons, which is a combination that could easily get us into shortages where a large chunk of the population is starving. And depending on which Americans it affects (or affects the most), the government may not care. Not saying it's definitely going to happen, but I think it's naive to say it definitely won't just based on America's buying power.
FWIW I agree that the current situation, whatever it's impact on America's food security, will impact other parts of the world more severely. I'm sure America's shit will still roll downhill.