Corn and Soybean Farmer to Americans: Your Grocery Bill Is Going to Go Up $1,000 a Month
Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
A farmer joined Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show to warn that President Joe Biden’s failed economic policies and the war in Ukraine are going to cause the costs of food to skyrocket in the coming months.
If you think the high cost of gasoline is a problem now, wait until summer when your grocery bill soars.
During his March 2 broadcast, Carlson informed his audience that Russia is a leading producer of the fertilizers and additives that American farmers use to help grow the crops that subsequently supply our grocery store shelves with food.
But the war in Ukraine is set to put a major crimp in the ability of American farmers to import the nutrients they need just as the planting season approaches, with the U.S. and other nations levying sanctions on Russia for its aggressive invasion of Ukraine.
Ben Riensche, the owner of Blue Diamond Farming Company in Iowa and a farmer of 16,000 acres in that state, told Carlson that the sanctions will have a far-reaching impact on our food supplies in the very near future.
“Soaring fertilizer prices are likely to bring spiked food prices,” Riensche said.
“If you’re upset that gas is up a dollar or two a gallon, wait until your grocery bill is up $1,000 a month, and it might not just manifest itself in terms of price. It could be quantity as well. Empty-shelf syndrome may be starting.”
Riensche went on to point out that costs to raise his crops have already gone up 40 percent because the cost of nitrogen is three times higher than last year. Phosphorus and potassium fertilizer prices have doubled, he added.
The farming expert also warned that these skyrocketing production costs cannot be changed in the near term. The costs are already set for now.
“The planting season in the northern hemisphere is just weeks away,” Riensche explained.
“There is no miracle technology that can cut that in half or a third. It’s a pretty fixed formula. For me to grow an acre of corn on my farm, I need 200 pounds of nitrogen, 200 pounds of phosphorus, and 100 pounds of potash. We just — it’s going to be hard how this plays out.”
But it isn’t just the war in Ukraine and the sanctions on Russia’s ability to export fertilizer supplies that farmers are facing. Failed Biden energy policies and leftist climate change policies are also wreaking havoc.
Riensche added that “what’s really affecting us are things that could have been prevented. … This could kind of be described as the food crisis of the Green New Deal.”
The farmer then pointed to Biden’s energy policies as a major contributor, saying, “policies that have made us more dependent on foreign energy, energy plants that have been decommissioned from other power sources and transitioned to natural gas, and thus competing against the fertilizer input stocks, Wall Street taking an activist investor role with strategic plant closures.”
There is one more major problem, as Riensche sees it: “But the kingpin in this — the worst part for a farmer — is this action that has been taken by the International Trade Commission, the tariffs that they put in place creating monopolies that we can’t buy from friendly parties that have a third of the supplies.”
This is yet another Biden tax on the middle and lower classes that are already struggling under the massive Bidenflation the president’s policies have wrought.
But even before we find our wallets drained for food, we are already seeing Biden’s destruction of our energy sector with $5-per-gallon gas prices. And experts warn that we will probably see $7-per-gallon prices come before we know it.
Gasoline has been on the rise for eight straight weeks, and energy strategist Dan Dicker told Fox Carolina that he can see gas prices in some areas “might even get to $6.50 or $7.”
Per-gallon prices have already doubled over the last two years. Gas was just $2.17 per gallon, on average, at the end of 2020. And it is no coincidence that 2020 was the last full year we had a president who wanted the U.S. to be energy independent.
The bad news keeps hitting us, though.
On the cusp of Biden’s first State of the Union speech on March 1, oil surpassed $106 per barrel for the first time in nearly a decade. And the unheard of has already occurred: Days later, San Francisco became the first city in America to find gas hit the $5-per-gallon mark, Fox Business reported. Those prices have continued to climb since then.
Brace yourself, America. Joe Biden’s policies are not being reversed, and that means the pain is just beginning.
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