Buying USA Challenge

[Quail_Antwerp]

I didn't say all Americans are lazy, but there is a vast amount who are. I had a whole family of them living with me earlier this year. Trust me, you can't get lazier than they were! And they expected to have everything without working for it. Which is why they are no longer living here.

Sorry, I hate greed. How many houses does a person need?

One, and it doesn't have to be a big house, either. Long as it has walls and keeps the rain out, what more do you need?

 

[Big Daddy]

One, and it doesn't have to be a big house, either. Long as it has walls and keeps the rain out, what more do you need?

My point exactly. So why can't people just sell things at a fair mark up?

 

[dacjohns]

To truly buy USA products means giving up much. How many are willing to give up chocolate? I don't think there are any cacao beans grown in the US. Or how about coffee and tea?

Food is a difficult thing, much more difficult than other things like clothing and furniture.

 

[The Vail Benton's]

I gave that a try a few months ago- could not find any pineapple made in the US at all- Couldn't find any dish towels, or shoes, or shrimp or etc. It was next to imposs9ible to find anything that was labled and made or grown in the US. Of course the non-labled ????
Some of it has to do with timing- for instance, early watermelons here are from Mexico, winter blueberries from South America, etc.
But it was incredibley hard to even find out where things were grown unless they came in a package.

I have dish towels made in the USA... I wove some myself and crocheted others using cotton yarn from Canada - I'm ok with that. I haven't learned to spin yet but when I do, you can bet the fiber I use will be 100% local.

 

[dragonlaurel]

Good thread.

I've noticed the food origin more and more since reading the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

I started getting Florida's Natural OJ. It ain't cheap for US oranges that have not been concentrated, but worth it in taste and peace of mind. I went to get it one day and found ingredients with foreign oranges. I think it was a knock off brand or cheap line from the same company, so be careful.

Most of the Fla. orange crop goes straight to the frozen concentrate. The stores think the California oranges are prettier so they ship Cal oranges to Fla to sell as fresh produce. It's crazy.
They also killed many of the Fla citrus trees in the last 10 years from the citrus canker fears. I wish they would have only taken infected trees. I woke up once to the sound of a chainsaw on the tree in my old yard. They were cutting down the old tree because it was in the same neighborhood as one the had canker. It was legal- but still Wrong

 

[prism]

A while back, I decided I wanted to be more conscientious about buying USA products. I was noticing labels after purchasing the product and discovered I was buying a heck of a lot of foreign products. I started making an effort check labels before buying and make wiser choices. I was floored at the percentage of items that were imported and how few choices there were for USA products.

The one that amazes me most recently is tomatoes - in the middle of summer. The store's produce department has six different tomatoes to choose from. Five are from Mexico and one is USA. That's a little ridiculous in my opinion.

There are times, depending on my mood, that I will go without a non-essential item rather than have the foreign version forced on me - like with tomatoes that are grown in the USA. If it is something that isn't grown in the USA because of our geographic terrain or climate, then that's an entirely different story.

 

[sylvie]

We have many farmer's markets that are pretty well stocked.
They began by selling extra backyard produce or planting a larger truck garden. When a growing year was bad they would go into the huge market in Cleveland in the very early morning hours to buy produce to supplement their homegrown offered at their stands. At this point you don't know where it came from, even though it is at a local produce stand.
Unless you grew it yourself, you may or may not be buying USA.

 

[me&thegals]

To truly buy USA products means giving up much. How many are willing to give up chocolate? I don't think there are any cacao beans grown in the US. Or how about coffee and tea?

Hey--not me!!

As I already mentioned, though, a person can make improvements without being completely local. I'm very willing to read stickers on all my produce and only buy things in the USA and make special stops at markets and local food folks for things in season. No problem at all. I can even skip bananas most of the time, grapes from Chile, canteloupes from Costa Rica.

 

[enjoy the ride]

When I spoke of pineapples and such, I was speaking of canned fruit that I can keep and use later in each month after the fresh stuff is gone from my monthly shopping trips. There should be no real seasonal aspect about canned foods. They're good for over a year.
Part of what happens IMO is that, in California at least, the mono-farms produce stuff like tomatoes in hugh seasonal batches for canning. If you go down the highway in central Ca, you will see hugh numbers of open semi's with tomatoes piled up over the top. Getting hit by a flying tomato is a road hazard.
Looking at these tomatoes though, it is clear that they are really not for fresh sale- they are a real mix bag of colors, sizes and shapes. I think they are for making tomato products.
Maybe there are regulations about how fresh tomatoes are produced that ones for canning do not have? Canning kills a lot of pathogens, etc.
My point is that growing fruit and vegetables for fresh sale must be more labor intensive due to having to time harvest and selectively pick to be good to the eye. This can be done cheaper by far in Mexico or somewhere else. Maybe that is why you can buy canned tomato paste and sauce for far less than you could ever buy the tomatos in a grocery store.
Labor unions and employers are natural combatants. Done well they act as a balance to each other. I don't think that this is the reason for the wholesale flight of business overseas.
My serious objection, what makes me sooooo angry , is the continuing burden of rules and regulations applies to homegrown businesses while politicians seem to bend over to avoid real regulation of imports. If they wish to impose a work rule or environmental regulation, then cost of this should be applied to imports too so that there is a level marketplace.

 

[Farmfresh]

This is a great thread.

Might I suggest ... Anytime we make a "made in America" purchase we should post it here. Brand names. That way others can buy them and support them too.

I heard a thing on the news the other day about socks. It seems there is only ONE small company in all of the USA that is still making socks. All of the rest are made elsewhere ... mostly in China.

Another thing that really bothers me. We have forgotten ... at least the greedy corporations have forgotten. In the Civil War the north beat the south because the factories were in the north. In WWI and WWII one of the reasons we won was that we were able to out - manufacture the enemy. We kept good quality supplies available to our soldiers. What would happen in a situation like that today?