Jihad vs. McWorld - Benjamin R. Barber [177]
American farms employ less than 2.5 percent of the workforce, but America remained in 1988 the world’s number two grain producer (behind China with nearly 70 percent of its labor force in agriculture), the number two fruit producer (behind Brazil with a quarter of its labor force in agriculture), and number four vegetable producer (behind China, India, and the former USSR). Vital World Statistics, ibid., pp. 62–66. The key statistic here is “agricultural efficiency, as measured by fertilizer and tractor use”: ibid., pp. 58–59; and Vital Signs 1993: The Trends That Are Shaping Our Future, (Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, 1993), p. 19.
3. Vital World Statistics, pp. 36–38.
4. There are a few odd cases like Albania, which have fallen from Second to Third World status as a consequence of the collapse of communism.
5. Paul Kennedy, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), p. 193.
6. Christopher J. Schmitz, World Nonferrous Metal Production and Prices: 1700–1976 (Totowa, N.J.: Frank Cass & Co., Ltd., 1979), pp. 48–53. France had been the number one producer in the early years of industrialization, and more recently Jamaica, Surinam, and Guyana, and then Australia, took the lead.
7. Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Parts 1 and 2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census), 1975.
8. Post-1970 statistics are from Metal Statistics Annual Reports (19933–1960), (Frankfurt: Metallgesellschaft AG, 1993), and are calculated not in metric tons but in tI’s, units of one thousand tons.
9. Schmitz, World Nonferrous Metal, p. 53. Three American firms are thus still among the six dominant global aluminum companies. However, environmental concerns and high labor costs are slowly driving processing plants abroad as well, increasing American dependency still further. For more on American companies, see Steven Kendall Holloway, The Aluminum Multinationals and the Bauxite Cartel (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988); for more detailed statistical information on American production, see U.S. Bureau of Mines, Aluminum, Alumina and Bauxite Annual Reports (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, 1994).
10. The story is the same for most metallurgical refining; e.g., “The cost of complying with federal environmental regulations is about six cents per pound of lead and between nine and fifteen cents per pound of copper—about 20 percent of the price of each metal in 1986, although rising metal prices have reduced this fraction to more like 10 percent today.” National Research Council, Committee on the Competitiveness of the Minerals and Metals Industry, 1990, p. 14.
Recycling can make a difference. Over half the trash in many community dumps can be incinerated (after sorting) and used to produce energy (see Barry Meier, “Finding Gold, of a Sort, in Landfills,” The New York Times, September 7, 1993, p. A 14). In their use of minerals, Americans have in recent years secured as much as 25 percent of consumption from recycled materials. But in many cases, as with lead, environmental and safety considerations make recycling difficult. See Lead Annual Review: 1993 (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, 1994).
11. Rocco Michael Paone, Strategic Nonfuel Minerals and Eastern Security (Lanham: University Press of America, 1992), p. 57.
12. Clyde S. Brooks, Metal Recovery from Industrial Wastes (Chelsea: Lewis Publishers, 1991), p. 5. There are limits, however. Manganese, for example, essential to iron and steel production, cannot be recovered from waste; nor have viable substitutes been found. See Manganese Annual Report: 1991 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines, 1992), p. 3.
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