Quote:
Originally Posted by ADL Colin
Your intuition is correct. I think it's a matter of definition.
Food expenses make up 9.7% of GDP.
Yet Agriculture makes up 1.4% of gross output by industry.
Food and beverage and tobacco products make up 2.7% of gross out put by industry.
Not sure but I bet the difference is in price to retail. Like maybe restaurant sales are in another category.
So it must be that various parts of the "food chain" total to 9.7% but that the agriculture part - defined as farms, forestry, fishing and "related" is just 1.4%
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That would make sense. If they break up sales to restaurants and things like that you could easily see how it could appear smaller than it might actually be.
I wonder what percentage of the food grown/manufactured in this country is controlled by just a few large companies. I got to thinking about this with the recent peanut scare. It seems like the company that has had those health problems processed and made peanut based products for a ton of industries. The other day I was at my store and about 20% of the cookie isle had recall notices on it. I wonder how much of that market they control.