U.S. Rep. Kat Cammack recently unloaded on the Biden administration for going green instead of seeking to solve a pending food shortage, created in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Florida Republican said President Joe Biden and his administration are overly focused on building “Tesla charging stations” instead of ensuring people will be fed. She made the comments during an interview last week with John Solomon of the website JustTheNews.com.
Solomon noted that the United Nations’ World Food Programme, or WFP, issued a report last week that declared the war in Ukraine “is a catastrophe, compounding what is already a year of destructive hunger.”
Considering that Ukraine and Russia account for a third of the global wheat supply, the WFP observed, “The crisis in the breadbasket of Europe is driving up the price of wheat as well as maize, sunflower oil, and crude oil — with dramatic fallouts for food security worldwide.”
The UN also warned that because of the war 323 million people – roughly the population of the United States – around the globe will face acute food insecurity this year, and that grain prices are already up 17 percent this year.
Solomon, in the interview, noted that “rural America is being crunched” by inflation and fuel prices.
In response, Cammack, a Gainesville Republican, who sits on the House Agriculture Committee, criticized Biden and his administration for bad policies as fertilizer prices skyrocket 700 percent this year, and diesel fuel costs continue to climb.
According to the Energy Department, diesel went for an average of $5.14 a gallon on April 4, up $2 a gallon from a year ago.
In addition to fuel and fertilizer prices, said Cammack, “You factor in the regulatory environment that is squeezing our producers to death. This administration has thrown more red tape on them and the threat of new taxes and regulations on producers, and then you basically put a bow on it with a pretty scarce labor market, it’s looking pretty grim.”
She predicted the combination of these conditions would lead to food shortages in 2023.
One reason for that was the war, said Cammack.
“Ukraine should be planting right now. They are not planting. So while this would be a typical growing season and a planting season, tractors are being used for the war effort, fuel is being used for the war effort — that is going to be a major, major issue as we move into the fall and the winter, because they will have missed an entire season. There will be no harvest next year,” she said.
But Biden and the Democrats in Congress also bear much of the blame.
Solomon pointed out how Democrats on the Agriculture Committee were talking about green energy instead of actual agriculture at a hearing last week.
Cammack said their thinking is borne of “willful ignorance.”
“They are completely aware of what is coming and what is happening, and yet they continue to march down this path of the so-called Green New Deal, and a renewable energy market.”
At that hearing, an Agriculture Department official was discussing establishing more renewable energy options in rural America.
Cammack recounted that she countered, “Producers across this country are scrambling to basically put fuel in their tractors, and you want to talk about Tesla charging stations in rural America where they don’t have enough money and margins to cover their basic fuel operations, let alone make payroll … and you want to put charging stations in rural America?”
“I think that that screams how out of touch Washington, and this administration, truly, truly are,” she told Solomon.
She predicted that Democrats are ignoring the ripple effect fuel prices are having on the agricultural supply chain.
“They’re so out of touch with what is happening in everyday America that it’s embarrassing,” said Cammack.
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