By Carla Sands and Kip Tom

Reprinted from The Washington Times

At home and abroad, President Biden’s “America Last” policies have brought security crises right to our borders. Here in the U.S., the president’s misguided economic policies erode a pillar of our domestic security: the nation’s agricultural industries.

Every nation needs secure and reliable food sources for its people. Without them, economies grind to a halt, and communities collapse. America is blessed with abundant fertile land, which, with the help of cutting-edge technology, has made our nation one of the world’s largest food producers.

The strength of the agricultural industry has also spread prosperity across America’s breadbasket, bringing jobs and opportunity to rural communities in Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and other states.

Unfortunately, this historical strength has lulled the Biden administration into a false sense of security. What progressives in the White House fail to admit is that their poorly designed economic policies are taking a toll on agricultural industries and the communities that keep food on our tables.

Out-of-control spending by the federal government has supercharged inflation, and Mr. Biden’s war on domestic energy has made even the most basic agricultural inputs more expensive. For example, poor policy from the Biden administration, coupled with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, sharply doubled the cost of many fertilizers between January 2021 and April 2022. Fertilizer prices remain significantly higher than when Mr. Biden took office.

When American fertilizers are uncompetitive, China and Russia seize a greater share of the market for these critical building blocks. The prices of farm machinery, pesticide and animal feed are up 28%, or $87 billion, from January 2021. And that is before 23-year-high borrowing costs that further make running a farm prohibitively expensive.