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Biden’s Food-flation

Posted on Thursday, May 12, 2022
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by Outside Contributor
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Going food shopping feels like getting punched in the gut. You pick up a whole roasting chicken, hoping it will feed four, and see the price: over $10 in many New York area stores — a staggering $18 if the bird’s organic. Apples are close to $3 a pound. And forget buying a steak; you might have to take out a mortgage.

The Biden administration’s woke policies are to blame for food-flation, making your trip to the supermarket sheer agony. President Joe Biden is prioritizing climate preservation over your ability to feed your family affordably. His policies are driving up the costs of fertilizer, energy and farm-to-store transportation — add to that overall inflation driven by excessive federal government spending. The result is sky-high food prices.

There’s no relief in sight. You can expect record-breaking food-flation through the rest of 2022, according to Bank of America market analysts. Americans have been whiplashed with a series of phony White House explanations for soaring prices. First Biden blamed profiteering oil producers, then colluding meat packers, then “Putin’s price hike.”

On Tuesday, Biden spoke to the nation on what he billed as his plan to remedy inflation. But in fact, he just repeated the same list of unsubstantiated excuses for why prices keep rising. The president’s media cheerleaders have been covering up the actual causes. Washington Post columnist Heather Long announced Sunday that Americans are entering a “new age of scarcity” when “a lot of everyday life remains out of control,” as if food-flation is as inevitable as lunar eclipses. Wrong.

Biden’s damaging policies can be reversed.

Start with fertilizers and pesticides, which are costing American farmers 50% more than just a year ago. Chemical fertilizers are made largely from natural gas. Ending Biden administration restrictions on domestic natural gas production, including opening up exploration and production on federal lands and offshore, will help bring down fertilizer prices, according to Heritage Foundation agricultural experts Daren Bakst and Joshua Loucks.

Biden’s war on fossil fuels pushed up the cost of fertilizer before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. True, Russia is a fertilizer producer, but the war in Ukraine is merely making a self-imposed problem worse. Reducing fertilizer costs is critical to making fruits and vegetables affordable but also meat. Feed prices for livestock and poultry went up 12.7% last year, largely because of soaring fertilizer prices. If feeding beef cattle costs less, steaks will, too. Energy inflation drives up food prices in another way. Shipping goods within the U.S. costs nearly 25% more than a year ago, according to St. Louis Federal Reserve data, thanks to the trucker shortage but also fuel prices.

You’d think Biden would be bending over backward to tackle the food price crisis. Instead, he’s doubling down on climate extremism. Food shoppers be damned. The federal Conservation Reserve Program pays farmers to leave farmland idle. Agricultural groups asked Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for permission to cultivate idle land, but Vilsack said no, predicting a “detrimental impact on…efforts to mitigate climate change.”

Not all the factors pushing up food prices are within Biden’s control. Avian flu is ravaging poultry and egg producers. Drought is curbing production in California. Putin’s war is diminishing wheat production in Ukraine. But Biden has the power to tame food-flation by standing up to the climate extremists in his own party. He should also curb overall inflation by calling for tight monetary policy (the Federal Reserve’s job) and halting out-of-control federal spending, including shelving even a pared down Build Back Better.

Sadly, the president offered none of these remedies in Tuesday’s speech.

What can average Americans do? Shop smart. Those precooked supermarket chickens are loss leaders — a bargain designed to lure you into the store. They actually cost less than uncooked chicken, though they tend to be smaller. You can vote smart, too. There’s a direct relationship between who governs in Washington and what you’re paying at the checkout.

Biden must be channeling Marie Antoinette, who dismissed public anguish over the price of bread by saying, “Let them eat cake.”

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and author of “The Next Pandemic,” available at Amazon.com. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey.

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barbi
barbi
2 years ago

… page 1 out of the official President Biden playbook: First, it’s all Russian’s fault. Then no, It’s President Trump’s fault. Then again no, it’s Russia’s and Trump’s fault. Then thereafter, it’s all those MAGA people, they are so extreme, everything’s all their fault!

Kim
Kim
2 years ago

Energy and food costs are not even part of the core inflation calculation. Imagine how bad that number would be if they were counted in the equation!

legally present
legally present
2 years ago

To say nothing of the HUGE invasion of illegal aliens will do to the West’s water problems. Food might be in short supply this fall!

Grace
Grace
2 years ago

Get used to being poor. Citizens are easier to manage when they are poor. They can be forced to grovel for a meal and turn their neighbors in for a dollar. It’s the Socialist, Communist , Marxist way to govern.
If I were an unskilled worker in America, a service employee, maid in a hotel, I would be very nervous., waitress, bartender. Biden’s border breachers are being imported to take your jobs at half the cost. A payoff to Corporate for donations. You who picketed for days in the cold and heat for months for better pay thought you finally won the “fifteen dollar minimum”, forget it. Your replacement will be living on welfare and using your old job as a supplement. As for the borders?
In Biden’s NEW WORLD ORDER there are no borders.
We have a few months to wake up and push back the purge of our freedoms but I can’t see any leaders out there. Maybe they are all in Ukraine fighting the Russians.

Stephen Russell
Stephen Russell
2 years ago

Now baby formula starvation, bad scene save for illegals

Paul C Narlock
Paul C Narlock
2 years ago

The draught in California mentioned in the above article is also government imposed. We, in California, have voted for 2 or 3 bonds over the last 10 years or so to build more reseviors in California. Each bond was for 3-5 billion totaling around 7-10 billion over the last 10 years or so. Guess how many have been built – YOU WIN THE PRIZE – Zero. 50% of all water goes out to the sea, 40% goes to the farmers, 8% to muicipalities, and 2% to residents. California has been a draught state since before history was written down. Look out! The way California goes so does the country. This administration and the Democrats, plus the do nothing Republicans, remind me of the old USSR back in the fifties. Good luck everyone.

Brenda
Brenda
2 years ago

As much as I agree with the author and how our country is in a steep decline, those words were never uttered by Marie Antoinette. She has been misquoted.
thoughtco.com/did-marie-antoinette-say-let-them-eat-cake-1221101

Jim D.
Jim D.
2 years ago

Take away Biden’s fancy meals for a few days and see if he notices anything different!

Hal
Hal
2 years ago

Do not be distracted by DemocRat propaganda … INFLATION IS A RELATIVELY SUBTLE AND UNBLAMABLE INCREASE IN TAXES TO FIT THE PARTISAN GOALS OF THE POLITICINS!!! Inflation is taxation in disguise. It removes constraints for fiscal responsibility for the effectiveness of the politicos elected to run the government in a non-hidden and accountable manner. IT IS PAST TIME FOR A BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT and A CONGRESSIONAL TERM LIMITS AMENDMENT … otherwise the slide to DemocRat Communism-Rule will become the norm. And at this point in time, it seems to be a near formidable accomplishment to get this to come about because the voting system has gone awry and no longer represents the will of the majority.

Governor Tim Walz giving a speech at a Podium in September 2024
Fema.gov Disasters USA Government home page under magnifying glass.
Medicaid text sign on calculator with pills and money. Medicaid text calculatoron American paper money with pills and orange prescription bottle

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