Source: Gretchen's Bakery
According to an e-mail from 'Politico Agriculture' yesterday, July was a record month for Butter imports to the United States of America:
In other dairy news, July butter imports hit all-time high: The U.S. imported a record 7.5 million pounds of butter that month, supplanting the previous record from May 2004. Most of it — 5.8 million pounds — came from Ireland, according to September data from USDA's Economic Research Service.
After reading that statistic, I wondered whether that was a large amount or not relative to the amount produced in a month here in the United States? First, we need to cast the number into perspective in order to make sense of the number. Second, we can compare the large weight to that produced here in the U.S. on a monthly scale by an online search.
How many butter sticks in 7.5 million pounds of butter?
To start the analysis, a metric has to be chose to which compare the enormous weight of butter toward. The metric of choice for this case is a 'stick of butter'. How does a person find out the weight of a single stick of butter? If you have read past blog posts on this site, the answer would start with asking a search engine such as Google the following question: How much does a stick of butter weigh in grams? The answer is shown below:
Notice that the units of measurement are expressed in units of 'grams' whereas the total weight of butter imported into the United States was expressed in units of 'pounds'. Therefore, one of two actions needs to be taken toward straightening the situation out: either the units on the butter change from 'pound' or the units of the weight of a single stick of butter remain in 'grams'. Since the weight of a stick of butter is easily understood in units of 'grams', the unit of choice will be 'grams' for this blog post.
Next, the total amount of butter is expressed in units of 'pound' which needs to be converted to units of 'grams'. In order to achieve the conversion, the conversion factor needs to be determined. Consulting Google with the following question is the path of choice: How many grams are in a pound of butter? The answer is shown below:
The answer yielded that in a single pound of butter, there are 454 grams of butter. With the conversion factor in hand, now the conversion from units of 'pounds' to units of 'grams' is possible as shown below:
The answer indicates that there are 3.4 billion grams of butter in 7.5 million pounds of butter. In order to understand the magnitude of the number, the quantity of butter sticks needs to be determined as shown below:
The calculation reveals that in 7.5 million pounds of butter (a record high import) there are an equivalent 30.1 million butter sticks. Considering that the current population of the United States of America is around 325.7 million people, that is roughly 1 stick of butter for 11 people. That is not a large amount of butter. In order to understand the number as an import into the United States in a single month, the following questions can be asked and researched online:
1) How many pounds of butter are produced in a month in the United States?
2) How much butter does the United States consume each year?
How Much Butter Is Consumed In The U.S. Annually?
In order to make further sense of the statistic that was reported by 'Politico Agriculture', we can start by asking Google the following question: How many pounds of butter are produced in a month in the United States? The answer which popped up first is shown below:
The image is rather fuzzy. But the answer is that per year, the United States produces around 1.85 billion pounds of butter. Which if divided by 12 to give an approximation would indicate a monthly production of just over 154 million pounds of butter. Given that statistic, why would the United States import butter? Especially, on the order of 7.5 million pounds of butter?
If the total amount of butter produced in the United States each year is divided by the total population of the United States -- 325.7 million people, the answer is shown below:
According to the result of the calculation, the amount of butter (in pounds) per year per U.S. resident is around 5.68 pounds (per person per year). How much butter does the United States consume each year? The answer provided by Google is shown below:
Source: Google
The image (result of our search) taken from a screenshot has three main points to observe:
First, the amount of butter stated in the 'boxed' region on the web page states that each American (on average) consumes about 3.7 pounds of butter per year. I would have thought that the number was much greater. Of course, that is down from 1900's when the average consumer was at 10 pounds per year.
Secondly, the graph shown at the side of the paragraph is shown below:
Source: DairyMoos
Which shows after 2009 - the annual consumption rising to reach a local maximum of just under 6 pounds of butter per person per year. How do we make sense of all of the numbers presented to us so far? Here are the numbers so far in this post from calculations and searches:
1) In July, a record import to the U.S. of butter reached 7.5 million pounds of butter.
2) The annual production (as of 2017) reached around 1.85 billion pounds of butter.
3) If the annual production is averaged over 12 months gives just over 154 million pounds of butter produced each month.
4) Dividing total butter production by U.S. population gives 5.68 pounds of butter per person per year.
And third -- last but not least, the paragraph below the boxed number in our last search for the total annual consumption of the U.S. of butter is said to be around 940,000 tons of butter. A ton is around 2000 pounds. If that is the consumption annually, do all of the numbers reported or searched make sense? Here is the last calculation shown below to verify the numbers based solely on the total U.S. population being reported as 325.7 million residents:
Conclusion...
The calculations reveal above that the amount of butter imported per year does not seem large in comparison to the demand annually by the residents of the United States. At 1.85 billion pounds of butter produced annually in the United States, there should be no need for further importing of butter to feed demand. Because the total demand per person is less than what is made? According to our calculations? Although, reported is the fact that the amount consumed per person per year is actually much higher than 3.7 pounds per person per year. It is closer to 6 pounds per person per year.
Not to mention that the United States does export butter out of the Country on an annual basis. That needs further exploration into how that value (number) fits into the total argument for butter supply and demand. As of now, you can perform an analysis to answer certain questions about the amount of butter imported or exported.
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