DC-based think tank warns US gov’t failing to prioritize food security while China ramps up efforts

The Biden administration has incentivized many farmers to reprioritize the use of their land away from cultivating it for food production.

The United States government and the Chinese Communist Party see “national security” in two very different ways – and that includes food security.

Historically, the CCP has been known to weaponize its food supply, which it has done against millions of its own citizens, resulting in mass starvation and suffering. But today, it appears the communist government is stockpiling food, indeed, making it a major national security priority for its people. Why?

Tommy Waller, president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Center for Security Policy, says most Americans do not understand that “food security is national security”. And that currently, the safety of American citizens is, indeed, being jeopardized by the U.S. government. The retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, in an interview with WND, explained that “at the federal level, our nation has catastrophically failed to prioritize food security while all of our adversaries, both hostile nations and globalists, have had their crosshairs on food for quite a while.”

For example, Waller said, in stark contrast to “having no problem starving its own people,” the Chinese government has an entire agency called the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration. It is largely responsible for laws and regulations that oversee grain and material reserves of the East Asian country.

In statistics often touted by members of the Chinese regime, Waller said, “China’s grain inventories are so abundant that the stock-to-use ratio is well above the international grain security threshold.”

“The U. S. government has not put a major priority on food security or preparedness,” Waller warned. In contrast to the Chinese regime’s prioritizing strategic reserves of food, he told WND, “under the Biden administration, the USDA and FEMA have transitioned from a culture of preparedness to priorities of diversity, equity and inclusion – DEI – and climate change.”

“Less than two percent of our population produces food for everybody else in this country,” Waller noted. “The average American isn’t prepared to go without food for any duration, so you can see the importance of keeping our farmers farming.”

“Take away farming and you take away food,” he said starkly, while warning that the average person is extremely unprepared for shortages of food. “They just take it for granted, and it’s understandable because we’ve always had it very easy in this country,” Waller said, but warning about one scenario in which Americans could find themselves hungry right away: “That number one scenario is a loss of electricity caused by widespread electric grid blackouts.”

Waller’s interest in food security, he said, steadily grew due to his work to secure America’s electric grid. “All of the infrastructure we have is dependent upon electricity,” he said. “When considering the second and third order effects of electric grid outages, you can see how food becomes a very significant item of importance.”

“Most Americans don’t think twice about paying for home insurance, automobile insurance, life insurance, but for whatever reason, they don’t think about food insurance,” Waller told WND. “They don’t think about stocking up.”

While the federal government may be failing to stress the importance of preparedness, Waller attests that food security “is the one area where individual people and their communities could actually enhance national security,” adding that the lack of preparedness is “a fixable problem, if we are smart about our policies and more.”

In a 41-page report, the Center for Security Policy has published recommendations to bolster food security at the federal, state, local and individual level. With little action at the federal level, he said, it is important for Americans to do what they can at the state and local, as well as individual levels.

For example, the Center, which has a 20-year track record of helping state governments shape policies to bolster national security, is actively supporting numerous lawmakers seeking to outlaw agricultural land from being owned by foreign adversaries. The security-oriented nonprofit also promotes the concept of community-supported agriculture and the importance of citizens purchasing their food from local farmers. “By helping sustain their work,” Waller told WND, “it’s going to create more resilience at the community level.”

“Everything the Center for Security Policy does is for the public interest,” Waller said. “We exist to provide uncompromised analysis, unflinching leadership and unconventional solutions to keep Americans safer,” he explained, adding that “there are no corporations behind what we are doing.” He shared that CSP can also “provide threat briefings at the county level for emergency managers and law enforcement”.

Ultimately, as Waller explained, “food security is national security, and everyone – from citizens to lawmakers – can do their part to increase both.”

Reprinted with permission from WND News Center.

Related Topics:#FoodSecurity #LifeSiteNews CenterForSecurityPolicy JMPhelps NationalFoodStrategy TommyWaller

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In the USA, Food Trumps Green Energy, Wind And Solar

Published on September 13, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Bonner Cohen

“We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar,” said President Trump in an Aug. 20 post on Truth Social. “The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!!”

Trump’s remarks came six weeks after enactment of his One Big Beautiful Bill terminated tax credits for wind and solar projects by the end of 2027.

The Trump administration has also issued a stop-work order for the Revolution Wind project, an industrial-scale offshore wind project 12 miles off the Rhode Island coast that was 80 percent completed. This was followed by an Aug. 29 announcement by the Department of Transportation that it was cutting around $679 million in federal funding for 12 offshore wind farms in 11 states, calling the projects “wasteful.”

Sending an unmistakable message to investors to avoid risking their capital on no-longer-fashionable green energy, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) is pulling the plug on a slew of funding programs for wind and solar power.

“Our prime farmland should not be wasted and replaced with green new deal subsidized solar panels,” said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on a visit to Tennessee in late August. “We are no longer allowing businesses to use your taxpayer dollars to fund solar projects on prime American farmland, and we will no longer allow solar panels manufactured by foreign adversaries to be used in our USDA-funded projects.”

The White House is putting the squeeze on an industry that can ill-afford to lose the privileges it has enjoyed for so many years. Acknowledging the hesitancy of investors to fund green-energy projects with the looming phaseout of federal subsidies, James Holmes, CEO of Solx, a solar module manufacturer, told The Washington Post, “We’re seeing some paralysis in decision-making in the developer world right now.” He added, “There’s been a pretty significant hit to our industry, but we’ll get through it.”

That may not be easy. According to SolarInsure, a firm that tracks the commercial performance of the domestic solar industry, over 100 solar companies declared bankruptcy or shut down in 2024—a year before the second Trump administration started turning the screws on the industry.

As wind and solar companies confront an increasingly unfavorable commercial and political climate, green energy is also taking a hit from its global financial support network.

The United Nations-backed Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) “has suspended activities, following the departure of numerous financial institutions from its ranks amid political pressure from the Trump administration,” The Wall Street Journal reported. Established in 2021, the NZBA’s 120 banks in 40 countries were a formidable element in global decarbonization schemes, which included support for wind and solar power. Among the U.S. banks that headed for the exits in the aftermath of Trump’s election were JP Morgan, Citi, and Morgan Stanley. They have been joined more recently by European heavyweights HSBC, Barclays, and UBS.

Wind and solar power require a lot of upfront capital, and investors may be having second thoughts about placing their bets on what looks like a losing horse.

“Wind and solar energy are dilute, intermittent, fragile, surface-intensive, transmission-extensive, and government-dependent,” notes Robert Bradley, founder and CEO of the Institute for Energy Research.

Given these inherent disadvantages of wind and solar power, it’s no surprise that the Department of Agriculture is throttling the flow of taxpayer money to solar projects. The USDA’s mission is to “provide leadership on food, agriculture, food, natural resources, rural development, nutrition, and related issues….” It is not to help prop up an industry whose best days are behind it.

Effective immediately, wind and solar projects will no longer be eligible for USDA Rural Development Business and Industry (B&I) Guaranteed Loan Program. A second USDA energy-related guaranteed loan program, known by the acronym REAP, will henceforth require that wind and solar installations on farms and ranches be “right-sized for their facilities.”

If project applications include ground-mounted solar photovoltaic systems larger than 50 kilowatts or such systems that “cannot document historical energy usage,” they will not be eligible for REAP.

Ending Misallocation Of Resources

“For too long, Washington bureaucrats and foreign adversaries have tried to dictate how we use our land and our resources,” said Republican Rep. Harriot Hagermann of Wyoming. “Taxpayers should never be forced to bankroll green new deal scams that destroy our farmland and undermine our food security.”

Hagermann’s citing of “foreign adversaries” is a clear reference to China, which is by far the world’s leading manufacturer of solar panels, according to the International Energy Agency.

According to a USDA study from 2024, 424,000 acres of rural land were home to wind turbines and solar arrays in 2020. While this – outdated – figure represents less than 0.05 percent of the nearly 900 million acres of farmland in the U.S., the prospect of ever-increasing amounts of farmland being taken out of full-time food production to support part-time energy was enough to persuade USDA that a change of course was in order.

Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT).

Agriculture

USDA reverses course under Trump, scraps Biden-era “socially disadvantaged” farm rules

Published on August 28, 2025

Todayville

MxM News

Quick Hit:

The Trump administration’s USDA is pulling back from defending Biden-era farm aid programs that gave preferential treatment based on race and gender. The move aligns with President Trump’s directive to dismantle remaining diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across federal agencies.

Key Details:

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) sued on behalf of dairy farmer Adam Faust, challenging USDA aid programs that favor minorities and women.
Programs under scrutiny include loan guarantees, dairy coverage, and conservation incentives, all of which disadvantaged white male farmers.
USDA issued a final rule eliminating “socially disadvantaged” designations, stating programs must uphold meritocracy, fairness, and equal opportunity.

Diving Deeper:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Trump administration is abandoning its defense of farm aid programs created during the Biden years that granted benefits based on race and gender. In a recent court filing, the USDA declined to defend several programs that civil rights watchdogs argue discriminated against white male farmers.

The litigation was brought forward by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) on behalf of Adam Faust, a Wisconsin dairy farmer. Faust contends that the Biden-era rules violated equal protection principles by privileging minorities and women over others in loan guarantees, dairy margin coverage, and conservation cost-share programs.

Under the loan guarantee program, minority and female farmers could secure up to 95% federal backing on loans, while white male farmers were limited to 90%. This disparity directly affected borrowing power and interest rates. Similarly, the Dairy Margin Coverage Program charged white male farmers a $100 annual fee, while exempting “socially disadvantaged” farmers. In conservation projects, minority and female participants received up to 90% reimbursement for costs, while others received only 75%.

On July 10, the USDA issued a final rule to strike the “socially disadvantaged” designation from its regulations, calling it inconsistent with constitutional principles and with President Trump’s policy objectives. “Moving forward,” the USDA rule stated, “USDA will no longer apply race- or sex-based criteria in its decision-making processes, ensuring that its programs are administered in a manner that upholds the principles of meritocracy, fairness, and equal opportunity for all participants.”

The department noted that while the loan guarantee program will be amended immediately, officials are still reviewing how to apply the new policy to the dairy and conservation programs. The USDA also signaled that its decision “could obviate the need for further litigation,” though WILL has indicated its legal fight will continue.

“This lawsuit served as a much-needed reminder to the USDA that President Trump has ordered the end to all federal DEI programs,” said Dan Lennington, deputy legal counsel at WILL. “There’s more work to be done, but today’s victory gives us a clear path to do even more in the name of equality.”