there is a massive difference in transporting rice and transporting fresh produce, like say a specific fruit that has specific temperature and humidity requirements and cannot exist in the same transportion space as other fruits which will release ethylene leading to overripening. which doesn't even touch the angle of lack of transparency for environmental practices and workers conditions in lengthy supply chains.

america does a shitload of agriculture wrong and wasteful compared to the developing world because we have an entire finance and credit system that encourages production systems which use luxury amounts of resources and fossil fuels that would be reduced under an agricultural system no longer organized to turn growers into customers of chemical companies.

the entire "but it's cheaper/easier/more economical to import from the developing world than grow it here" is one of those ag 101 talking points that has been around since colonialism and is used to divert attention from resistance to anti-globalization movements, indigenous food sovereignty movements and the constant stream of data showing that most people on the planet eat most efficiently from smaller diversified farms near them. the anomaly is the western model of conquering faraway places and turning these communities into vast plantations for export. that is what is environmentally unsound and decouples communities from their lands and their culture/foodways, introducing malnutrition, poverty, metabolic disorders, etc.

but the indoctrination machine loves to say "you grow butter better than me and I make guns better than you, so we all benefit by you selling me your butter for my guns". they often lean heavily on comparisons that are completely inappropriate. like rice in Vietnam and apples in the US. or cashews in Ghana and almonds in California. or lobster in Maine and everything everyone is eating in Las Vegas.