alt Hacker NewsThis doesn't sound like an accurate description of US agriculture. Just off the top of my head
* The US is not producing enough food - it's now a net food importer
* The increasing problems we are seeing in the food supply chain are usually tied to producers cutting costs and padding margins
Matt Stoller has gone into this at length - https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/is-america-losing-the-abi...
So I mean it could depend on your definition of productivity, if anything that increases shareholder returns at the expense of a good product or robust supply chain is considered more "productivity," sure. Just as monopolies are the most "productive" businesses ever for their shareholders, but generally awful for everyone else, and are not what most people would think of as productive.
The human definition of productivity is - less inputs producing more and better outputs.
The cartel doublespeak definition is - the product got worse and the margins improved, which seems to describe US Big Ag at present
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At least in US agriculture, when they speak of productivity they generally refer to pounds per acre for crops. For livestock it's a bit less clear, they sometimes refer to pounds of feed to final live weight. You generally have to schedule a slaughter day months out and you estimate the final weight, you don't get paid as well if you are too far off the weight in either direction. Its less common generally, but in the cattle industry I've heard the accuracy of hitting that targets talked about as productivity.
I agree with you on the double speak though, really I think its just a lack of the public really understanding the meaning given to "productive" in the industry though. The industry doesn't hide what it means by the word, most just don't care about any version of productive that measures things like nutrient value, sustainability, soil health, animal welfare, etc.
In case you are concerned that’s wildly misleading.
The US exports lots of cheap food and imports expensive foods like wine, beer, high end cheese, candies. In terms of calories / nutrition the US is a huge net food exporter but we like our luxury chocolates etc.
American companies love to setup cheap factories overseas even if they use US corn syrup to make a beverage the trade balance is based on corn syrup not the value of the manufactured soda. Meanwhile in the other direction we’re importing cans of soda manufactured in other countries.