Kristi Noem Signed Law Exempting Massive Chinese Communist-Linked Company From Land Leasing Ban
Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signed legislation earlier this month banning companies based in six adversarial countries, including China, from owning or leasing agricultural land that contains a carveout for a major Chinese-owned employer in her state.
The law included a provision that allows Smithfield Foods to continue leasing land in South Dakota, despite its Chinese ownership. Smithfield Foods is a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based WH Group Limited, a corporation led by members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the DCNF previously reported, and is one of the largest employers in South Dakota.
The legislation was “narrowly tailored to exempt Smithfield” due to the company’s economic importance to South Dakotan farmers, Republican State Rep. James Wangsness, a main sponsor of the law, told the DCNF.
“While this was not our favored position, it was necessary to avoid adverse financial hardship on local producers that contract with Smithfield,” he continued. “This exemption clearly highlights the problem posed by foreign ownership.”
Noem told the DCNF in January that former Smithfield CEO Kenneth Sullivan, “was getting his instructions from China” and that “he didn’t care enough about the lives of South Dakotans to work with me to see how we could best serve them.”
“In South Dakota, we have the added pressure of having Ellsworth Airforce Base in our state,” she continued. “We cannot allow China to buy up ag land surrounding this critical piece of national security.”
Smithfield leases hog production from South Dakota farms, according to local media.
The new South Dakota law bans companies based in China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela from buying or leasing agricultural land in the state. But the law allows prohibited entities to lease agricultural land when it is “exclusively for contract feeding of livestock, at an animal feeding operation, by a family farm unit, a family farm corporation, or an authorized farm corporation.”
WH Group, through Smithfield Foods, controls more than 100,000 acres of land across several different states, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The governor’s office referred the DCNF to congressional testimony given by Noem on Wednesday that touched on the dangers of Chinese farmland ownership, but did not mention the Smithfield exemption.
https://www.stationgossip.com/2024/03/kristi-noem-signed-law-exempting.html