USDA ROLLS OUT PLAN TO SAFEGUARD AMERICA'S FOOD SUPPLY
This week, the Trump administration unveiled a multi-agency effort that formally acknowledges American agriculture as a crucial component of national security and lays out concrete steps to protect our food and agricultural systems from foreign adversaries. The threat to those systems is all too real, with two separate instances of Chinese nationals smuggling biological materials into the United States having come to light in just the past month.
In a strong show of force that underscores President Trump’s commitment to safeguarding our food supply, the rollout of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Farm Security Action Plan was spearheaded by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins alongside Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
Seven Focus Areas To Shore Up American Agriculture
The overall goals of USDA’s Action Plan are to promote agricultural and economic prosperity, defend the foundations of agriculture and food, and strengthen domestic agricultural productivity. These objectives are supported by seven focus areas that together will help build a more robust and resilient agricultural base.
1. Secure and Protect American Farmland: The Protecting America Initiative has supported action at both the state andfederal levels to prevent American farmland from being purchased by foreign adversaries and countries of concern. This Action Plan delivers on that goal by reforming the USDA Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act process and increasing penalties for late and knowingly false filings; working with state partners to take legislative and executive action to end the purchase of American farmland by foreign adversaries; and regularly working with the Department of the Treasury’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) on foreign transactions that involve the U.S. agricultural industry. CFIUS is a government committee that reviews foreign investments in the U.S. for national security threats.
2. Enhance Agricultural Supply Chain Resilience: USDA will create a list of critical agricultural inputs and materials and conduct regular assessments to identify vulnerabilities to the food and agricultural critical infrastructure sector. The Protecting America Initiative has previously highlighted how both state and federal policies can affect critical inputs essential to American agriculture.
3. Protect U.S. Nutrition Safety Net Programs from Fraud, Abuse, and Foreign Adversaries: USDA administers 16 different federal nutrition programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). USDA will ensure strict adherence to relevant laws, regulations, and executive orders and block any attempt to misuse these programs to fund criminal or terroristic activities. Secretary Rollins also announced that nutrition assistance would no longer be awarded to illegal immigrants.
4. Enhance Security Research: USDA will ensure all USDA-funded research has a direct nexus to benefiting American agriculture. Entities that receive USDA funding for research must also certify that they are not owned or controlled by foreign adversaries, are not participating in programs that could result in sharing research with foreign adversaries, and must disclose gifts or contracts with foreign adversaries.
5. Evaluate USDA Programs to Ensure America First Policies: USDA will systematically review all programs and contracts under its purview and eliminate all agreements going to foreign adversaries. Funding instead will be prioritized for American businesses and producers.
6. Safeguard Plant and Animal Health: Especially germane after two Chinese nationals were caught smuggling an agricultural pathogen into the U.S., USDA will ramp up efforts with state and federal partners to identify, prepare for, and respond to agricultural biosecurity threats and enhance agricultural security, as well as focus on the eradication of plant and animal diseases that could jeopardize American crops and herds.
7. Protect Critical Infrastructure: USDA will bring together agricultural stakeholders and intelligence and law enforcement communities to protect the agricultural industry from cybersecurity and ransomware attacks.
Building A Unified Apparatus To Respond To Foreign Adversaries
The Protecting America Initiative has long advocated for action at all levels of government to protect against the threat of foreign adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and USDA’s National Farm Security Action Plan recognizes the importance of a unified, coordinated response and “serves as the launching point for USDA to work in further unison with governors, state legislators, and other partners to fully integrate agriculture into the broader national security enterprise.” One important step in formally integrating agriculture into national security discussions can be seen in the Memorandum of Understanding between the Departments of Agriculture and the Treasury that formalizes Secretary Rollins as a member of CFIUS on matters that involve “agricultural land, agriculture biotechnology, or the agriculture industry.”
Republican governors Bill Lee from Tennessee, Jim Pillen from Nebraska, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders from Arkansas were also present at the rollout of the Action Plan. All three governors have shown extraordinary leadership in their states in overseeing the passage and implementation of laws to protect agricultural land at the state level.
PAI Applauds President Trump And Secretary Rollins For Their Leadership
USDA’s Action Plan is a thoughtful roadmap for how to identify and address existing vulnerabilities that put American agriculture – and therefore American national security – at risk of exploitation by foreign adversaries like the CCP. We applaud President Trump and Secretary Rollins for taking this threat seriously and laying out a clear-eyed vision on how to make America safer.