U.S. Reps. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) and Tom Emmer (R-MN) are alarmed by the pace at which Chinese companies have been purchasing U.S. agricultural land and want to ensure the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has the reporting tools necessary to provide Americans with the fullest possible picture of all foreign purchases of United States land.
“Over the last decade — and continuing today — we have witnessed the People’s Republic of China [PRC] invest trillions of dollars throughout the Middle East, Indo-Pacific, South America, and Africa as part of their Belts and Roads Initiative. Now, they’re purchasing U.S. agricultural assets as a national priority for the PRC. This poses an immediate threat to U.S. national security and food security,” Rep. Newhouse said.
Transparency on USDA’s process for reporting on foreign purchases of U.S. agricultural land while ensuring that the Biden administration is enforcing existing laws “is the bare minimum we need to be doing to protect our national security,” the congressman added.
“America’s ability to grow and produce resources here at home is our greatest strength,” said Rep. Emmer. “The growing trend of foreign nations, like China, buying up American farmland presents an insidious threat to our ability to feed our own people. We cannot allow these crucial resources to be taken by faceless foreign actors. We must understand the identities and intentions of those attempting to purchase our farmland.”
Toward such goals, Reps. Newhouse and Emmer led 19 of their Republican colleagues in requesting that USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack provide information about the USDA’s process for compiling data and reporting on foreign purchases of U.S. agricultural land.
In a July 18 letter sent to Vilsack, they noted that the volume of the PRC’s U.S. land holdings surged from 13,720 acres to 352,140 acres between 2010 and 2020. And they pointed out that no major economic activity originating from the PRC is transacted without the direct or indirect participation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which does not share America’s democratic and free market values.
Looking beyond China, Reps. Newhouse, Emmer, and their colleagues also wrote that all foreign holdings of U.S. agricultural land have increased by an average of 2.3 million acres per year between 2015 and 2020, with at least 74 percent of them originating from countries with which the U.S. has friendly relations.
“However, in all foreign holding cases — potentially concerning or otherwise — our information appears to be largely limited to the reporting companies required under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA). This legislation, enacted in 1978, only requires foreign persons who buy, sell or gain interest in U.S. agricultural land to disclose their holdings and transactions to USDA directly or to the Farm Service Agency county office where the land is located,” they wrote. “The bill does not require details related to a company’s ownership structure or investment intentions.”
The lawmakers requested that Vilsack answer several questions, including to what extent enforcement mechanisms are successfully prompting compliance, and what process USDA follows to monitor changes in land usage and where the data is recorded, among others.
“During this time of high inflation and supply chain challenges, food-producing land is more important than ever, and our constituents deserve to know as much as possible about foreign acquisition of domestic farmland, regardless of whether we are concerned about the motives of the parties involved,” wrote the congressmen, who included U.S. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Randy Feenstra (R-IA), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA), David Valadao (R-CA), Pete Stauber (R-MN), Frank Lucas (R-OK), and Dusty Johnson (R-SD).