The Trump administration is attempting to crack down on Chinese-owned U.S. farmland and the threat that ownership poses to national security.
Earlier this week, Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins was joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Counselor to the President Peter Navarro, and several state governors to announce a comprehensive plan to protect U.S. farmland and food supply from foreign adversaries.
The Action Plan
As reported on Thursday’s AM Update, key elements of the seven-point plan include emphasizing the strategic importance of agriculture and a ban on farmland sales to Chinese nationals and other foreign adversaries.
In recent years, foreign-owned U.S. farmland has sparked concerns over spying, sabotage risks near military installations, and agricultural intellectual property theft. Sec. Rollins said more than 265,000 acres in the U.S. are owned by Chinese nationals.
“American agriculture is not just about feeding our families but about protecting our nation and standing up to foreign adversaries who are buying our farmland, stealing our research and creating dangerous vulnerabilities in the very systems that sustain us,” Rollins told reporters at USDA headquarters on Tuesday.
Sec. Hegseth warned that “foreign adversaries assume we’re not watching, and we’re not paying attention, and we’re not doing something about it, because we are,” and AG Bondi backed that up with some figures. “Our National Security Division is actively monitoring foreign threats to American agriculture. The FBI has opened over 100 bio-smuggling investigations in recent years,” she said. “We will prosecute you, we will hold you accountable.”
The History of Purchases
AM Update spoke to the Director of America First Policy Institute’s China Policy Initiative Adam Savit about the national security concerns posed by Chinese-owned U.S. farmland. He said the announcement was “nothing short of revolutionary” because “nothing has been done on this issue at the federal level for decades.”
He noted a reporting mechanism called the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) was implemented back in 1978 that requires the USDA to put out a report every year disclosing foreign purchases of agricultural land. “Now, that’s all foreign purchases,” Savit said, “For example, there’s no issue with allied countries owning foreign land. The Canadians own a lot of timberland, for example.”
In his view, the process is no longer sufficient. “It is not up to date for the modern era when we have adversaries that are buying our land, especially the People’s Republic of China, of course, ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP,” Savit explained. “While they do not have a huge amount of land in acreage per se, of course, as they are an adversary country, they have the potential to use all of the land that they do own for surveillance and sabotage.”
In June 2024, The New York Post identified 19 U.S. military bases located in close proximity to land bought up by Chinese entities. Savit said some of these land purchases may seem harmless because they are in remote locations, but they could pose very serious threats to national security.
“One of the earliest ones that came to national attention in 2019 was a purchase of 10,000 acres of designated agricultural land on the Texas-Mexico border. This was near Laughlin Air Force Base,” he explained. “A Chinese billionaire came in and was trying to purchase this land, which he would turn into a wind farm, which would also be connected to the Texas power grids where he could potentially use nefarious means to, let’s say, overload that grid or in other ways interfere with it. Again, also near flight paths near this Air Force base, which can be monitored.”
New Oversight
On Tuesday, Sec. Rollins also announced she would be joining the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which Savit said is critical. “Until now, [CFIUS] has not involved the secretary of Agriculture because this has gone under the radar. People didn’t perceive agriculture as a security threat,” he noted. “Now, when an agricultural case comes in, when there is an inbound purchase of land by an adversarial country like China, agriculture will be able to sit on that decision, will be able to inform that decision. That’s an important modifier that happened with this announcement.”
According to Savit, the threats posed by Chinese-owned U.S. farmland go far beyond spying on U.S. military assets. “Chinese entities are increasingly gaining access to America’s agricultural data and proprietary technology, though not through espionage, but through business acquisitions of agricultural companies operating inside America,” he said.
Savit gave the example of Syngenta, an agrochemical company that was acquired by ChemChina in 2017. “It used to be a Swiss-owned company… A lot of farmers rely on this,” he explained. “It’s a multi-billion dollar company. It provides chemicals, pesticides, seed technologies – things that people who are not in the ag industry, like me, don’t think about… But this is essential to what these farmers do.”
“A Chinese company called ChemChina acquires Syngenta, and then the Chinese government has full access to this technology that they’re developing, the data that they collect, access to the land,” he added. “In this case, we’re actually talking about intellectual property theft.”
Any Recourse?
As for clawing back land already owned by foreign adversaries, Savit said it will be up to the states to lead the way. “This comes down to state law,” he noted. “The states have been doing amazing work while the federal government was getting its act in order and now, finally, has some sort of an ordered plan here under the Trump administration.”
Because agricultural sectors and property law differs from state to state, Savit said dozens of states have been “experimenting” with policy changes. “Arkansas put in a law that they enforced and pushed out Syngenta,” he noted. “Under their state law, they were able to eject Syngenta and also penalize them with a monetary value.”
But the process is, as Savit admitted, not simple. “State by state, this gets very sticky as far as ownership and how to rescind that ownership,” he said.
Politico reported in April that more than two-thirds of states, primarily controlled by Republicans, have either enacted or are considering laws to limit or ban foreign ownership of land.
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