America, the Breadbasket of the World. Maybe, but for how long. Would you believe Sept. 30, 2005.

Agriculture, one of the few big sectors of the economy that could be counted on to produce trade surpluses, has recently generated monthly deficits -- a development that could worsen the nation's already significant trade imbalance.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. imported more agricultural goods than it exported in June and August, the first monthly trade deficits since 1986, when the Farm Belt was mired in a depression.

"It's very worrisome," said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist of banking giant Wells Fargo & Co. "We need agricultural trade surpluses more than
ever because the nonagricultural deficit is ballooning."

The U.S. is still the world's biggest agricultural exporter. But the agricultural-trade surplus is evaporating so quickly that some economists in the Bush administration are quietly speculating that the sector might generate an annual trade deficit as soon as the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2005.

U.S. agricultural exports have been stagnant for eight years in part because new farm powers are emerging around the world in places where land is cheaper and governments are pumping money into infrastructure such as roads and ports. Brazilian soybean farmers are winning customers away from the U.S., for example, and Russia has transformed itself from a huge customer of U.S. wheat into a wheat-exporting rival. India, which once depended on American aid to fight famine, is an emerging food exporter. China, long a big buyer of U.S. crops, is pushing for food self-sufficiency. Canada is a major exporter of hogs and beef to the U.S. The upshot: The U.S., which controlled half of the world's trade in wheat in the 1980s, now has just one-quarter of the world market.

(11-08-04 wsj; The wsj online is a subscription service. You can email me for a full copy of the article.)