US farm chief says reliance on China threatens American ‘freedom’

US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told lawmakers on Thursday that American dependence on China for food, fertiliser and other agricultural inputs poses an “existential” threat, framing food security as a national security issue while defending the White House’s reduced fiscal 2027 budget request. “If we need to rely on China for our food and our fertiliser and all the things that come with that, we will lose what we understand to be liberty and freedom in this country. That’s how important this is,” she said while testifying before the House Committee on Agriculture. “This is an existential issue to preserving…