IV.

Patterns of Economic Development

The economic activities of North America are extraordinarily diverse. The United States and Canada have sophisticated modern economies. Modernization has been uneven in Mexico, with major developments in power, transportation, and manufacturing undercut by chronic inflation and a staggering burden of debt.

A.

Agriculture

Farming is relatively more important in Mexico than it is in the other North American countries and provides employment for 28 percent of the labor force (compared with some 3 percent in the United States and 4 percent in Canada). Subsistence farming is still important throughout Mexico, especially in the south; commercial agriculture is well developed in many areas, however, particularly in the central plateau and in the north. The leading commodities are corn, wheat, and beans, which are raised mostly for domestic consumption, and cotton, cattle, coffee, and sugar, which are produced largely for export.

Agriculture in the United States and Canada is dominated by highly mechanized farms, which produce immense quantities of crops, livestock, and livestock products. The Great Plains of the central United States and the Canadian Prairie Provinces (Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan) are major world producers of grain (particularly wheat, but also barley, oats, rye, and grain sorghum), oilseeds, and livestock (dairy and beef cattle and sheep). Perhaps the world's finest large farming area is the Corn Belt, that part of the U.S. Middle West from western Ohio to eastern Nebraska, which is the world's largest producer of corn, as well as a major supplier of other grains, soybeans, cattle, and hogs. Farming in California yields a huge amount of high-value irrigated crops, notably fruits and vegetables. Florida and Texas also are great producers of fruits and vegetables, and potatoes are grown in vast quantities in Idaho, Washington State, Oregon, Maine, North Dakota, and southeastern Canada. Other outstanding agricultural products include cotton, broiler chickens, dairy products, and sugarcane.

B.

Forestry and Fishing

Forestry is an important sector of the Canadian economy, especially in British Columbia, Ontario, and Québec Province. Notable forest-products industries also flourish in the western United States (particularly in Washington, Oregon, and California) and in the southeastern United States.

Fishing is the leading economic activity in Greenland but is a relatively unimportant sector in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, even though the catch is large and some coastal areas are dependent on revenues from sales of finfish and shellfish. Besides the waters near Greenland, major fishing grounds are off the northern Pacific coast, off the northern Atlantic coast, and off the southern Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts. In addition, large tuna fleets are based in southern California and western Mexico.

C.

Mining

The extraction of minerals is an increasingly important economic activity in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The United States has been one of the world's leading petroleum producers for many years, Canada has been a major producer since the late 1940s, and Mexico became a world leader in oil production in the late 1970s. The United States ranks second among world natural-gas producers and is also a leader in mining coal, produced particularly in the vast Appalachian fields. Iron ore has long been a major product of both the United States and Canada, primarily from deposits around the western end of Lake Superior. More recently, much iron ore has been produced in the Québec Province-Labrador border area of eastern Canada. Among the other minerals that have been recovered in quantity in North America are copper, silver, lead, zinc, nickel, sulfur, asbestos, uranium, phosphate rock, and potash.

D.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing has long been a leading economic sector of the United States. The principal concentrations of factories have been located in the urban areas of a manufacturing belt extending roughly from Boston to Chicago. Since the 1950s, however, manufacturing has expanded considerably in other parts of the country, particularly in the big cities of California and in the southeastern states. Output is extremely diversified, with emphasis on primary and fabricated metals, processed food, machinery, electronic and aerospace equipment, motor vehicles, chemicals, textiles, clothing, paper, and printed materials. Manufacturing also is a principal economic activity in Canada. Factories are situated primarily in the cities of Ontario, Québec Province, British Columbia, and Alberta; Toronto and Montréal are the leading manufacturing centers. Canadian firms produce a wide variety of goods, especially processed food and beverages, transportation equipment, paper and other forest products, primary and fabricated metals, chemicals, and electrical and electronic equipment.

Manufacturing has become an increasingly important part of the Mexican economy since the 1940s. Although not as technologically developed as in the United States and Canada, factories in Mexico produce a broad spectrum of goods, notably chemicals, clothing, processed food, motor vehicles and motor-vehicle parts, construction materials, and electrical and electronic equipment. Mexico City is by far the leading manufacturing center, but several other cities, including Monterrey and Guadalajara, have important concentrations of factories.

E.

Energy

North America consumes great quantities of energy. Canada depends much more on hydroelectricity than do the United States and Mexico, but it also makes heavy use of petroleum and natural gas. The enormous consumption of energy in the United States requires great imports of petroleum and natural gas to bolster the considerable domestic output of coal, petroleum, natural gas, and hydroelectric and nuclear power. Mexico's energy production expanded considerably in the 1970s and early 1980s, primed by the increased domestic recovery of petroleum and natural gas.

F.

Transportation

The transportation network of North America is extremely well developed in most parts of the conterminous United States and in southernmost Canada. A remarkable system of limited-access interstate highways was built in the United States beginning in the 1950s, and the country in addition has a wide-ranging network of other all-weather roads. The rail network also is well established; it is critical for many types of freight transport but is a relatively unimportant passenger carrier. Air traffic grew considerably after 1945, and an expansive network of routes was created. Inland waterways, particularly the St. Lawrence Seaway-Great Lakes system and the Mississippi-Missouri river system, are important freight-transportation routes. Central and northern Canada and Alaska have only limited surface transportation facilities and depend heavily on air service. The interior transportation systems of Mexico are unevenly developed. All three countries have extensive modern facilities for handling oceangoing vessels.

G.

Trade

The United States is by far the leading trade partner for both Canada and Mexico, which in turn are significant, but not dominant, trade partners of the United States. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which took effect January 1, 1994, outlined the elimination of trade barriers between the three nations over the following 15 years. In 1997 NAFTA countries had a combined population of more than 395 million and a combined gross domestic product of $8.9 trillion. NAFTA forms one of the two largest free trade zones in the world. The organization is expected to add member nations from the region.

Primary U.S. exports are machinery, motor vehicles, foodstuffs, chemicals, and aircraft. Canada ships mainly motor vehicles, machinery, metal and metal ore, forest products, chemicals, and foodstuffs, and the major exports of Mexico are crude petroleum, coffee, and metal ore. At the end of the 1980s the value of Canada's annual exports exceeded that of its imports, whereas the United States and Mexico regularly paid more for imports than their exports earned. The United States ranks among the world's leading trading countries in terms of the total value of imports and exports.