I’m suddenly curious where the cheese air lifted into Berlin after WWII came from.
That is to say, most people probably never eat US-made cheese, and those that did mostly did so while physically on the US.
Also, most of that exported cheese tends to go to the same few places. That happens to every kind of product.
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.
You think global trade amounts to 44 billion dollars per year?
The United States alone has a GDP of 29,000 billion dollars. World GDP for 2023 seems to be estimated at 105,000 billion dollars.
By that estimate, $2.2B / year is 0.000021% of global trade.
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”.
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.
There are speed limit signs, stop signs, directional signs, etc. because otherwise you'll get lost.
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.