The United States has the largest cultivated area in the world, totaling about 373 square kilometers. The US has three of the world's four biggest grain producers (controlling 80 percent of the world's grain trade and having significant pricing power). The United States controls more than half of the world's food market, manipulates the global food trade, and has a large share of the pricing power of food transactions. The ability to produce food is one of the most important parts of American hard power.
Agriculture Top Design
The United States has long ceased to be an agricultural society, but the largest federal government department in the United States, other than the Department of Defense, is the Department of Agriculture. Us Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said that whoever controls oil controls all countries, and whoever controls food controls all mankind.
There are just over 15 million American farmers, but these people feed more than 300 million Americans. They gave the United States a commanding advantage in the global food market. But all this is inconceivable without scientific zoning. Zoning is based on plans, not markets.
The United States is divided in three ways: Seven Regions, Nine Regions, and Ten Regions.
Take the Nine Regions as an example: Early American agriculture was all in the south and east, mainly along the Atlantic coast. After the Civil War, it expanded to the central Plains and west. How to use land scientifically must be studied and planned by the government. The United States government uses a census of agriculture to classify areas according to specialization and climate conditions.
The agricultural production in New England is mainly dairy cattle, vegetables, and poultry, and the crops are mainly foraged crops, oats, and other forage crops. The mid-Atlantic region used to produce mainly grain then planned for dairy, fruit. The central northeast region focuses on the dairy industry and develops cattle and pig breeding, as well as corn and soybean production areas. The Central northwest region is an important meat-producing area for pigs and cattle as well as a barn. South Atlantic region is a subtropical climate, frost-free period of more than 200 days, agriculture is divided into three: tobacco, cotton, and integrated cash crops. The central and southeast region is a specialized tobacco and cotton-producing area, but also cattle farming. Located directly south of the United States, the Central southwest region is major rice, wheat, and subtropical crop-producing region. The western mountainous region is mountainous and desert, with emphasis on animal husbandry. Pacific Region: Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska, Hawaii. The first three states are the main irrigation areas in the United States. California is an agricultural state with the highest output value of agricultural products, the most concentrated capital, and the largest farms, mainly wheat, fruits, vegetables, livestock, and poultry. Hawaii is based on sugar cane and fruit.
Regional specialization and large-scale distribution is an obvious characteristic of American agricultural production. The northeast central region produces corn, soybeans, and wheat, the south Pacific coast produces fruits and vegetables, the south Atlantic region is known for its tobacco production, and so on. There are even five states in the United States that only grow one crop and four states that only grow two crops. Texas has 14 percent of the nation's beef cattle, Iowa has 30 percent of the nation's hogs, and Arkansas is the nation's largest rice producer (43 percent of the nation's rice). The California wine industry cluster has 680 commercial winemakers and thousands of grape farmers, and so on. At present, the proportion of specialized cotton farms is 79.6%, vegetable farms 87.3%, field crop farms 8L.1%, horticultural crop farms 98.5%, fruit tree farms 96.3%, beef cattle farms 87.9%, dairy cattle farms 84.2%, poultry farms 96.3%. As for the nine agricultural industrial belts in the United States, they are typically specialized agricultural production areas. Each of them gradually formed a large agricultural industrial cluster.
High Level of Agricultural Specialization
There are about 2.2 million farms in the United States, and the larger the farm, the more specialized it is.
The existing mechanization equipment of the American farms is various and complete. All kinds of tractors, combine harvesters, deep-soiling machines, and all kinds of ditch irrigation, sprinkling irrigation, drip irrigation equipment, etc. Basically realized from the arable land, sowing, irrigation, fertilization, spraying to harvest, threshing, processing, transportation, selection, drying, storage, almost all crop production fields of mechanization.
Livestock and poultry breeding, especially chicken, cattle have already realized mechanization and automation. Thanks to a large number of feed grinders, milking machines, milk preservation processing, and other complete sets of mechanical equipment, livestock production. There are also many other agricultural products that can be processed automatically at the press of a button.
Mechanized production on such a large scale greatly increased the efficiency of American agriculture. At present, the average farm labor force in the United States can cultivate 450 acres, take care of 60,000-70,000 chickens and 5,000 cows, produce more than 100,000 kilograms of grain and about 10,000 kilograms of meat, and feed 98 Americans and 34 foreigners.
Fiscal, Taxation, Legal and Technological Support
Subsidies account for 24 percent of American farmers' household income. Huge subsidies are very important to ensure the income of American farmers and improve the competitiveness of American agricultural commodities in the international market. Subsidies cover almost all major agricultural products. In addition to traditional agricultural products, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, sugar, and other agricultural products that previously did not enjoy subsidies have also been included in the scope of subsidies and protection. Agricultural taxes in the United States are not only less, mainly including income tax, inheritance and gift tax, and property tax, but also light tax. Agricultural taxes have been a small part of the government's main revenue stream. There are also many tax breaks for American farmers.
What is worth paying attention to is the informatization of American agriculture. First, the agricultural computer network system(AGNET) is the world's largest agricultural information system so far. The system covers 46 states in the United States, 6 provinces in Canada, and 7 countries outside the United States and Canada, connecting the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 15 state agricultural agencies, 36 universities, and numerous agribusinesses. Second, agricultural remote sensing technology (RS), geographic information system (GIS), and global satellite positioning system (GPS) were used to realize the precise planting of crops.
Farmers can fine-tune soil and crop management practices as field factors change. When fertilizing crops, for example, the screens of large tractors (equipped with a GPS receiver with a display screen and a data processor) can display two overlapping images at the same time. One is a digital map (which shows the soil type of each plot, the content of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, the yield per plant in the previous season, the yield per plant in the current year, etc.), and the other is a grid map (which can show the plot location of the tractor at any time according to GPS signals). At the same time, the data processor can automatically calculate the fertilizer proportion and spraying amount of each plot according to the digital map of each plot made in advance, and give instructions to the automatic spraying machine.
