"America now imports two dollars of feed grains for every three dollars of exports, and imports $2.5 billion more red meats than it exports..."  It seems that eating red meat is the main problem here.  I've always opposed animal husbandry as being completely unnatural and cruel to animals (it's much better for an animal to live its life in the wild until it's killed for food than to be penned up its entire life).  Maybe this news shows that we need to stop this practice entirely.  People don't need to eat red meat; it's a luxury.  Moreover, most Americans eat way too much of it, causing environmental problems (the cattle industry has caused massive environmental harm to the western U.S., for example) and degrading their health.  Or, perhaps our massive population needs to become vegan until we can reduce our numbers enough so that everyone can hunt meat without driving species to the brink of extinction.

Jeff Hoffman

How would mass veganism "reduce our numbers"?

I didn't mean that avoiding meat would cause human population to decline.  What I meant was that until we lower our population to the level where prey species could tolerate being hunted by humans without lowering their populations significantly, perhaps we should all avoid animal products.

Jeff Hoffman

An while we're at it we need to restore habitat. Loss of habitat is one of the major causes of endangered/extinct species. Of course with a lower population there would be fewer stresses and the ecology could, over time, recover.
Now that the WTO decided that EU bans on genetically engineered foods violated trade laws it's only a matter of time before other countries with bans or moratoriums will be forced to allow GE imports. I suppose this will increase US food exports since we're the world's largest grower of GE foods.
If we're really concerned about national security one of the most important things we can do is to regionalize our food supply, support local growers, grow as much of your own food as you can, buy foods that are in season. A global food system for anything besides luxury items makes no sense at all.

Another problem is that a great deal of arable land is being paved over for housing tracts, strip malls, etc. Here in Southern California, I have watched a great deal of what used to be farmland be destroyed by development.

Nature will always win, one way or another. The question is, how will it affect us? Think about it.

When a country is growing a lot of crops for export, instead of feeding its own citizens, there is something wrong with the picture.  And a country that imports most of its food is putting itself in a very insecure position.  I'm not saying we can't import or export anything, but we should confine our importing to luxuries that we can't grow at home.  When it is cheaper to buy South American artichokes than the ones grown in Castroville, the order of things is seriously skewed.
      Some thoughts on meat consumtion and the environment:  Industrialized "factory farms" are destructive and inhumane-no question about it.  And, undoubtedly, many of us could stand to eat considerably less meat.  But is the vegan lifestyle really the answer?  The tendency is to replace animal products with soy, which is often genetically modified, and grown with lots of chemicals.  From an ecological perspective, a case could be made that it is better to purchase locally grown, humanely and sustainably raised meat, than imported soy products.  The issue is not a simple one.
   Finally, I think Library Lady is absolutely right about the paving-over of agricultural land.    This is a folly that I see far too much of where I live.  When will we get some sense?