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The Chinese own approximately 30 million acres of prime real estate in the United States.
-Lt. General Michael Flynn
China is buying up American farms. Washington wants to crack down.
Bipartisan pressure is building to stop foreign nationals from purchasing American farm operations and receiving taxpayer subsidies.
The push to drain China’s influence from the U.S. economy has reached America’s farm country, as congressional lawmakers from both parties are looking at measures to crack down on foreign purchases of prime agricultural real estate.
House lawmakers recently advanced legislation to that effect, warning that China’s presence in the American food system poses a national security risk. And key Senate lawmakers have already shown interest in efforts to keep American farms in American hands.
The debate over farm ownership comes amid broader efforts by Congress and the Biden administration to curb the nation’s economic reliance on China, especially in key industries like food, semiconductors and minerals deemed crucial to the supply chain. The call for tighter limits on who owns America’s farms has come from a wide range of political leaders, from former Vice President Mike Pence to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), after gaining momentum seeded in farm states.
Former Vice President Mike Pence speaks during an event.
Former Vice President Mike Pence speaks during an event. | Sean Rayford/Getty Images
“America cannot allow China to control our food supply,” Pence said Wednesday during a speech at the conservative Heritage Foundation, urging President Joe Biden and Congress to “end all farm subsidies for land owned by foreign nationals.”
Chinese firms have expanded their presence in American agriculture over the last decade by snapping up farmland and purchasing major agribusinesses, like pork processing giant Smithfield Foods. By the start of 2020, Chinese owners controlled about 192,000 agricultural acres in the U.S., worth $1.9 billion, including land used for farming, ranching and forestry, according to the Agriculture Department.
Still, that’s less than farmland owned by people from other nations like Canada and European countries, which account for millions of acres each. It’s also a small percentage of the nearly 900 million acres of total American farmland.
But it’s the trend of increasing purchases and the buyers’ potential connections to the Chinese government that have lawmakers spooked.
USDA reported in 2018 that China’s agricultural investments in other nations had grown more than tenfold since 2009. The Communist Party has actively supported investments in foreign agriculture as part of its “One Belt One Road” economic development plans, aiming to control a greater piece of China’s food supply chain.
“The current trend in the U.S. is leading us toward the creation of a Chinese-owned agricultural land monopoly,” Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) warned during a recent House Appropriations hearing.
The committee unexpectedly adopted Newhouse’s amendment to the Agriculture-FDA spending bill (H.R. 4356 (117)) that would block any new agricultural purchases by companies that are wholly or partly controlled by the Chinese government and bar Chinese-owned farms from tapping federal support programs.
That move followed a contentious debate over the potential consequences for Asian Americans if Congress adopted a provision aimed squarely at China. Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) said that if the amendment was about national security, buyers from other countries should also face similar restrictions. “It would perpetuate already rising anti-Asian hate,” Meng warned at the markup.
Rep. Grace Meng speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y. speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill, on May 27, 2020, in Washington. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo
But Meng, Newhouse and committee leaders indicated they would find a solution as the legislation winds through Congress. The measure is expected to reach the House floor before the end of July, as part of a broader appropriations package, although the Senate has not yet drafted its own version of the spending bill.
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“We are new in this process,” said Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), chair of the agriculture appropriations subcommittee. “I would suggest that we sit down and we work through it so we can accomplish our objective, but do it in a way that is sensitive to all those who might be somewhat offended by the approach.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/19/china-buying-us-farms-foreign-purchase-499893