There's a ton of facilities like this for storage of various stuff in middle America. The limestone geology (there was once a sea between the Appalachian and Rockies) lend itself well to them. These facilities store all manner of things, almost everyone reading this has probably eaten cheese from one of them.
If noting unusual ever happened then I might agree with you but unusual events like significant US food aid after disasters are going to significantly affect these numbers even if it’s just for a few meals after an earthquake or political subsidy such as in 1965-1966 where US cheese flooded India. Several other countries had similar events during the early days of the green revolution.
Mad Cow disease is a more recent example where global supply chains shifted and suddenly people were eating a lot more imported products or products from different countries.
Further, from restaurants, ingredients in packaged food, vacations, baby food, pot luck’s, to one off sampling of a MRE many people have done something once which completely changed the supply chain for their normal diet.
PS: I’d agree it’s under 50% globally when including children, but for the HN audience specifically it’s probably over that.
No you misunderstood again, US cheese exports make up ~5% of global cheese trade between countries.
Further, when you first read “global trade” and thought “all global trade” why would you suddenly from “global trade of cheese” to “global production of cheese”.
Production and trade are the same thing. That's what we mean when we say trade.
Why would you object to the idea that the amount of global trade in cheese is equal to the global production of cheese, but not to the idea that the amount of global trade is equal to the amount of global production?
You could argue that there's more trade than there is production, because of reselling, but that would once again dramatically shrink the share of cheese trade that you could attribute to US cheese exports, which don't take future reselling into account.
Does the geology related to the current shale revolution from pretty much the same area have anything to do with that past sea? I’m just curious and too lazy to search for it now on my mobile phone
Virtually all petroleum (and shale-oil) deposits were formed in shallow seas, though possibly in lakes or wetlands (though swamps are more associated with coal-bed formation). Oil is largely metamorphosed algae.
J.R. Dyni, "Geology and Resources Of Some World Oil-Shale Deposits" (2003)
Oil shales were deposited in a variety of depositional environments including fresh-water to highly saline lakes, epicontinental marine basins and subtidal shelves, and in limnic and coastal swamps, commonly in association with
deposits of coal.
