Food is one of those ”strategic reserve” things, because you can’t just build farms and have them immediately start cranking out staple foods like a factory. The fed keeps strategic reserves of things that take time to create, but which have major short-term needs. A farm will take weeks or months to start producing, and farmers plan their crops literal years in advance.
And that “farms are only a few weeks away from producing” announcement is a cold comfort when people are hungry right now. Most of society is only about three days of missed meals away from violence.
The sad reality is that the south/central US produces a lot of food. Sure, there are other areas that food could be produced, but it’s not already doing so, meaning it would be useless in anything except the long-term. But in order to reach the long-term, you first need to deal with the short-term. And the short-term in this scenario has a lot of people going hungry.
Yes, but (at least according to the above split) the population density would wildly change. The central/south US exports a lot of food because they don’t have a lot of people to feed. California produces 13% of the food, but it also consumes the most because it has the most people. Same with places like New England, which would also be allied with (and thus need to be supported by) California.
The stats would suddenly skew towards the central US having a bunch of excess food per capita, while the east/west US struggled with long term food shortages, supply lines between the east/west through/around the hostile central US, etc…
Do it.
Blue states can grab the popcorn and watch red states cannibalize themselves.
But conservatives will use the federal government to go to war to keep the blue states…because they need us.
We don’t need them.
chuckles in purple state
I’m in danger
Financially, culturally, technologically… no. We don’t need red states. But we do need food.
Indoor farming is a thing. Importing food from other countries is a thing (we do it already).
right, because states like California are solid metropolis from edge to edge
Food is one of those ”strategic reserve” things, because you can’t just build farms and have them immediately start cranking out staple foods like a factory. The fed keeps strategic reserves of things that take time to create, but which have major short-term needs. A farm will take weeks or months to start producing, and farmers plan their crops literal years in advance.
And that “farms are only a few weeks away from producing” announcement is a cold comfort when people are hungry right now. Most of society is only about three days of missed meals away from violence.
The sad reality is that the south/central US produces a lot of food. Sure, there are other areas that food could be produced, but it’s not already doing so, meaning it would be useless in anything except the long-term. But in order to reach the long-term, you first need to deal with the short-term. And the short-term in this scenario has a lot of people going hungry.
dude, California is the top producer of agricultural products in the United States, producing 13% of the entire US agricultural output.
Illinois, Washington, etc up there at the top of the list as well.
Yes, but (at least according to the above split) the population density would wildly change. The central/south US exports a lot of food because they don’t have a lot of people to feed. California produces 13% of the food, but it also consumes the most because it has the most people. Same with places like New England, which would also be allied with (and thus need to be supported by) California.
The stats would suddenly skew towards the central US having a bunch of excess food per capita, while the east/west US struggled with long term food shortages, supply lines between the east/west through/around the hostile central US, etc…
California is 10% of the US population and produces 13% of the US food. Sounds to me like we’ll be ok.
Don’t be reductionist.
Of course, eastern California might split off to go red since that half of the state is pretty solidly red…
To the extent you have some food production, that population might be mighty grumpy at being more unambiguously a political minority.
It wouldn’t be pretty…