When Aroon Roy Padharia gathers today with family and friends for Thanksgiving dinner, the cuisine will be authentically Indian, with the same preparation methods and recipes that he loves from his native land.
But the ingredients will come from all over: To make the dishes they want, Padharia's dinner companions will have to look beyond American vegetables, grains and spices to products that come from India, the Middle East, Vietnam and elsewhere.
Ethiopian flour is popular at Arada International Market, whose customers use it to make traditional breads.
(Melina Mara -- The Washington Post)
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"Whatever they import, we come in and buy," said the Maryland attorney yesterday as he scanned the aisles of Spice of India, a Takoma Park market. "We often don't even know where it's coming from."
The ever-increasing appetite for foreign foods and beverages in the United States is among the reasons the nation is expected to pay as much for imported farm products in fiscal 2005 as it earns by selling wheat, soybeans and other products abroad, according to a Department of Agriculture report released this week. Whether it's immigrants seeking a taste of home, a family hungry for out-of-season produce or a connoisseur hunting a vintage Bordeaux, the national pantry has become increasingly eclectic.
If the USDA's forecast is accurate, 2005 will mark the first time since the late 1950s that the country didn't record an agricultural surplus.
"It's quite a surprise. We've had this trade surplus for so long and it's been so large in most years. To be zero is a departure from where it's been," said Bruce Gardner, dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland. "And the reasons suggest it isn't likely to turn around. . . . This probably is not just a one-year blip."
U.S. consumers are projected to buy more foreign wine, beer, fruits, vegetables and beef this year, helping push the value of all U.S. agricultural imports to $56 billion in the government fiscal year that started Oct. 1, up from $52.7 billion last year, the department said.
Meanwhile, the value of U.S. farm exports is projected to fall to $56 billion this fiscal year from a peak of $62.3 billion in the prior year, largely reflecting lower prices for many products, the report said.
The nation exported $9.6 billion more in farm products than it imported last year. The forecast for fiscal 2005 could still change and is subject to shifts in a variety of factors, including exchange rates, gross domestic product and foreign production. Nonetheless, the trend toward a disappearing agricultural surplus is clear. "We expected it to happen eventually. We didn't know how soon it was going to happen," said report author and USDA economist Carol Whitton.
The country's evolution into a net food importer would further erode its balance of trade with the rest of the world. Agriculture represents just a small slice of total American trade, but the farm sector has dependably produced a surplus to offset, if only slightly, the boatloads of electronics and other consumer goods shipped in from Asia.
