BROOKE ROLLINS: Farm security is national security

In June, the fragility of our food supply was exposed when foreign nationals, including a member of the Chinese Communist Party, were charged with smuggling a noxious fungus into the United States. Experts describe it as a potential agroterrorism weapon and responsible for billions in annual losses around the world. 

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the two foreign nationals planned on using a University of Michigan laboratory to further their scheme involving the biological pathogen that causes crop disease and is harmful to human health. This is just one example of how our global competitors have been playing the long game – infiltrating American research institutions, taking control over American farmland, launching cyberattacks on agribusinesses, stealing our biotechnology and flooding our markets with cheap imports. 

That ends today. 

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American agriculture is not just about feeding our families but about protecting our nation and standing up to foreign adversaries who are buying our farmland, stealing our research and creating dangerous vulnerabilities in the very systems that sustain us. Reshoring and nearshoring our food and agriculture supply chain is essential for our nation’s security.  

The new US multi-agency plan treats agriculture as an essential part of national security. (iStock)

Today, July 8, 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), alongside the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, took a historic step to address these priorities head-on with the release of USDA’s National Farm Security Action Plan. 

This action plan moves USDA to work with governors, state legislators, cabinet agencies, Congress and the National Security Council to fully integrate agriculture into America’s national-security planning. 

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The action items in the plan confront foreign threats by mandating transparency in foreign ownership of farmland while increasing penalties to the maximum allowance under the law and seeking to block further purchases by countries of concern. 

It enhances enforcement against fraud in federal nutrition programs, which have been exploited by international criminal organizations to the likely tune of billions diverted from America’s needy to fund their illicit activities. 

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And it ramps up protections for agricultural research and intellectual property – our nation’s innovation engine – to ensure complete alignment with the America First agenda rather than the interests of malign foreign adversaries. No longer will USDA enter funded or unfunded agreements with foreign adversaries. 

This plan is about independence. A country whose farmland is controlled by our adversaries cannot claim to be secure. And a country that allows its research, resources and resilience to be eroded by foreign influence chooses a path of vulnerability, strategic weakness and eventual subservience. 

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That’s why this plan enhances research security by preventing collaboration with foreign adversaries and ensures USDA resources, provided by hardworking taxpayers, do not support foreign actors, but instead prioritizes American research, American technology and American innovation. The plan also encourages states to take legislative action that complements federal protections. It invites Congress to recognize agriculture as vital to our national defense as much as any bridge, base or border. 

Yunging Jian appears in a Michigan federal courtroom for a detention hearing on Friday, June 13, 2025. Jian allegedly conspired with her boyfriend, Zunyong Liu, to transport a toxic crop-killing pathogen to the United States. (Carole Kabrin )

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Now, more than ever, our agricultural policy must protect American farms from the security threats attached to an increasingly globalized economy. Whether you're a farmer in Iowa, a grocer in Georgia, or a parent in Pennsylvania, your well-being depends on the strength and security of our food and agriculture system. As the recent episode at the University of Michigan demonstrates, American agriculture is a matter of national security. 

With this action plan, President Donald Trump and our administration are putting America’s farmers, families and the future of our country first. And that’s exactly where they belong. 

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