Foreign Entities Control Over 43 Million Acres of U.S. Farmland

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Foreign Entities Control Over 43 Million Acres of U.S. Farmland

The Daily Wire reported that foreign entities acquired 3.4 million acres of U.S. agricultural land in 2020, now totaling 43.4 million acres, nearly 2% of the country’s land. The surge, mainly driven by foreign-controlled wind energy farms, contrasts with a modest increase before 2017. Notable foreign landowners include the United Arab Emirates, China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and others. Concerns over national security prompted Senate actions against foreign land acquisitions, but a defense bill recently omitted those provisions.

More from The Daily Wire:

Allowing foreign countries, including adversaries like China, to buy one of America’s most precious resources has garnered bipartisan outrage.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) told The Daily Wire that the country “can’t allow this to continue.”

“At best, this serves the interests of the companies and other countries, not America’s,” Cotton said. “At worst, these purchases undermine our security.”

He added that with many American farmers reaching retirement age, there is a threat of the trend getting even worse.

In September, the Senate Committee on Agriculture held a hearing on the topic, where Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) said, “I hope many of our colleagues agree, the Chinese government and other U.S. adversaries should own zero, zero agricultural land in our country.”

“They’re taking back our pandas. We should take back all of their farmland,” Fetterman said, referring to panda bears being returned from U.S. zoos. “Small farmers… face enough hardships, and they don’t need to compete with foreign governments buying our land.”

In 2022, foreign interests expanded land holdings in Colorado, Alabama, and Michigan. Canadian investors owned a third of the land, with notable Chinese companies like Brazos Highland Properties and Murphy Brown LLC controlling substantial acreage. While Chinese government acknowledgment is absent, total Chinese-owned land slightly decreased to 187,000 acres, up over 15 times since 2006. The past decade saw foreign-controlled cropland rise from 5 million to nearly 13 million acres, mainly driven by wind and solar energy firms. Around a quarter of foreign-held acreage is used for non-agricultural purposes, totaling almost one million acres.

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