The protein system
The United States supplies 123.1 grams of protein per person daily, including 82.5 grams from animal sources.[1, 2] Red meat and poultry output reached 106.7 billion pounds in 2025 against domestic use of 97.1 billion; pork and broiler output exceeded domestic demand, while beef covered 90 per cent.[4] Milk and eggs are also produced in surplus.[4]
Corn, soy and soybean meal underpin livestock and exports. The 2025/26 crop includes 17.0 billion bushels of corn and 4.26 billion bushels of soybeans.[4] The United States is the second-largest soybean exporter, behind Brazil, and also trails Argentina and Brazil in soybean-meal exports.[4] Seafood is the main production contrast: roughly 80 per cent of consumption is imported, while domestic aquaculture remains small. Capture fisheries landed 4.21 million tonnes in 2024 and aquaculture 468,000 tonnes.[17, 22, 23] The country exports less seafood by value than it imports, despite a large wild catch.[17]
Durable domestic capacity:
The United States produces surpluses of pork, poultry, dairy, eggs and feed protein.[1, 4] Beef and seafood are the exceptions. Beef self-sufficiency has fallen to 90 per cent, with the cattle herd at 86.2 million head on 1 January 2026, its smallest since 1951.[5] Capture fisheries declined from 4.65 million tonnes in 2023 to 4.21 million in 2024.[22, 23] Management remains a relative strength: 42 of 522 managed stocks are classified as overfished, 23 are subject to overfishing and 51 have been rebuilt since 2000.[18]
Durability is weakened by the cattle cycle and by falling groundwater under the High Plains.[13]
Resource headroom:
Land and freshwater are abundant nationally: 0.45 hectares of arable land and 8,437 cubic metres of renewable internal freshwater per person.[20, 21] But much of the land is already used for feed and ethanol. Corn and soy occupied 180 million acres in 2025/26; 37 per cent of corn went to feed, 33 per cent to ethanol and by-products, and 62 per cent of soy was crushed.[4]
Water is scarcer where feed is grown. The High Plains aquifer has lost 286.4 million acre-feet of recoverable storage since around 1950, with local well declines up to 265 feet.[13] Land equipped for irrigation fell from 27 million hectares in 2000 to 24.69 million in 2024, and its share of cropland declined from a 2021 peak of 17.13 to 15.96 per cent.[36] Cropland and arable area each contracted by more than 13 per cent, and cropland per person fell 28.6 per cent.[36] Farms get about three-quarters of the bank lending their share of the economy would suggest, but credit has not expanded the area farmed.[37] The Conservation Reserve Program keeps 25.8 million acres outside production by design; returning it would mean unwinding conservation contracts.[39]
Import exposure:
Meat and poultry imports equalled 7.3 per cent of domestic use in 2025, and soybean-meal imports were small beside domestic output.[4] Beef and seafood account for most remaining exposure. Beef imports reached 5.4 billion pounds in 2025 and are forecast at a record 6.1 billion in 2026, about 21 per cent of use.[4] Brazil was the largest origin in early 2026 at 23 per cent, followed by Australia, Canada, Mexico and New Zealand; the top five supplied 77 per cent.[6] About 80 per cent of seafood consumption is imported, with edible seafood imports well above exports.[17] No major protein flow depends on Hormuz, Malacca, Suez or Bab el-Mandeb. Beef imports are rising because the cattle herd is at a long-term low, not because domestic production has ceased.[4, 5]
Upstream dependence:
The United States supplies most of its own feed and nitrogen fertiliser. Ammonia net import reliance was 5 per cent in 2025 across 38 plants.[12] Potash is different: net import reliance was 92 per cent in 2025, with Canada supplying 79 per cent of imports, Russia 12 per cent and Israel 3 per cent. There is no government stockpile and no substitute as a plant nutrient.[10]
Phosphorus is a smaller but concentrated risk. One domestic producer supplies elemental phosphorus used in glyphosate-based herbicides, and its output does not meet annual needs.[14] Seed genetics are also concentrated in two firms, while 42 per cent of hired crop farmworkers lacked work authorisation in 2020–22.[7, 9] Executive Order 14387 gives the government allocation powers over existing phosphorus and glyphosate output, but does not add capacity.[14] The risk falls on weed control rather than on fertiliser supply.[11, 14]
Access and affordability:
Healthy-diet unaffordability was 4.5 per cent in 2025, or 15.7 million people, down from 5.4 per cent in 2022.[27] remains below FAO's 2.5 per cent reporting floor; was 3.8 per cent in 2022.[28, 29] Food-at-home prices rose 11.4 per cent in 2022, then slowed to 1.2 per cent in 2024; the 2025 estimate was 2.3 per cent.[30] The share has fallen since its 2022 peak but remains above its 2021 low.[27]
Store distance is not uniquely a low-income problem. In 2019, 33.2 per cent of low-income people and 33.6 per cent of SNAP households lived more than a mile from a large grocery store, below the 39.8 per cent share for the population overall.[31] Still, about 2 million households without a vehicle lived more than a mile from a store.[31] In total, 13.7 per cent of households, containing 47.9 million people, were food insecure in 2024 despite the national protein surplus.[8]
Retail prices include processing, transport and retail margins: farms received 11.8 cents of each dollar spent on domestic food in 2024.[42] Even so, chicken breast prices rose 25.3 per cent during the 2021–22 world-price spike, against 11.4 per cent for food at home, pushed up also by avian influenza and higher domestic input costs.[40, 41, 43] Food-at-home prices remained 15.4 per cent above March 2022 in July 2026 while the FAO index was down 18.2 per cent from its peak.[40, 41, 46] The dollar appreciated 9.5 per cent in real effective terms between 2021 and 2022, cushioning imported prices.[44] In July 2026, a kilogram of boneless chicken breast cost USD 9.16, or 1.26 hours of work at the federal minimum wage and 0.45 hours at average food-service wages. Eggs were far more volatile than chicken during 2025, swinging 129.6 per cent between the year's high and low.[43, 45, 47]
Shock endurance:
The United States has no disclosed government grain or protein stockpile. Corn stocks covered 12.2 per cent of use in 2025/26, but 5.55 billion bushels used for ethanol could be redirected toward feed.[4, 16]
The recent avian-influenza wave tested the system. Since 2015, outbreaks have killed 221.7 million birds, including 178.8 million laying hens.[24] Egg prices peaked at USD 6.23 a dozen in March 2025, roughly triple the 2023 trough.[19] The flock rebuilt to 315.8 million hens by March 2026, even as 9.47 million layers were lost in February alone.[6] Retail prices had fallen to USD 2.14 by June 2026.[19] Concentrated slaughter adds a domestic vulnerability: four firms handle 85 per cent of fed cattle, 67 per cent of hogs, 53 per cent of broilers and 55 per cent of turkeys.[7]
The dollar and deep capital markets support imports despite official reserves of USD 254.5 billion covering less than a month of trade against annual goods and services imports of USD 4.11 trillion.[32, 33] Federal debt is projected to reach 134 per cent of GDP by 2035, and Moody's removed the last top-tier rating in 2025, but market access remains deep.[34] SNAP participation rose 14 per cent and benefit spending 66 per cent within two quarters of the 2020 shock.[35]
Trajectory
Executive Order 14387 gives USDA allocation authority over phosphorus and glyphosate supply, managing a shortage without ending single-producer risk.[14] A Michigan potash project has a conditional USD 1.26 billion loan commitment for 800,000 tonnes a year, against imports of 5.6 million tonnes; Idaho's approved phosphate mine replaces a nearby source nearing exhaustion.[10, 26] The cattle herd will take three to five years to rebuild; the beef replacement-heifer inventory was 4.71 million head.[5]
A second phosphorus producer, domestic potash mining, more aquaculture and less concentrated slaughter would improve resilience. Neither the Michigan nor the Idaho project closes the import gap, and neither is yet fully funded.[10, 26] The farm surplus remains strong, but key inputs and processing capacity are concentrated. Beef and aquaculture output, public stock data and a legal farm workforce will shape how resilient that surplus proves under sustained disruption.