A new report has found that at least 40 million acres of farmland, pastures and forests in the United States are owned by foreign entities, including people from adversarial nations like China, Russia, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.
This is according to the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) report, titled "Foreign Investments in U.S. Agricultural Land," which was focused on pointing out ways in which the federal government checks foreign investor farmland purchases are flawed and how "enhancing efforts to collect, track and share key information could better identify national security risks." (Related: America's second-largest foreign owner of land is a CHINESE BILLIONAIRE.)
According to the GAO's report, foreign ownership of U.S. land increased tenfold between 2009 and 2016 during the administration of former President Barack Obama. Foreign land ownership in the U.S. has increased by another 40 percent since 2016. Many plots of land near sensitive military facilities are now owned by foreign entities whose ties – or lack of ties – to their respective nations' governments and militaries are not properly scrutinized by the federal government.
What's worse is that the administration of President Joe Biden has failed to properly track the extent of foreign ownership of U.S. farmlands and does not appear to have any plan in place to begin tracking that data.
Chinese entities own nearly 350,000 acres of American agricultural land
The GAO's findings note that Chinese firms own around 346,915 acres of American agricultural land in 30 states as of December 2022. Some of these are small plots, like the one acre of land a Chinese firm owns in Kansas or the 19 acres and 20 acres Chinese firms own in Nebraska and New Jersey, respectively.
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However, in places like Texas and North Carolina, Chinese firms collectively own tens of thousands of acres of land. In Texas alone, Chinese entities own nearly 160,000 acres.
In its report and investigation, the GAO pinned much of the blame on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for failing to consistently share timely data on foreign investments in U.S. agricultural land – as the department is required to do by the 1978 Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act.
"This report confirmed one of our worst fears – that not only is the USDA unable to answer the question of who owns what land and where, but that there is no plan by the department to internally reverse this dangerous flaw that affects our supply chain and economy," said Republican Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington, where China owns over 6,500 acres of land and where entities tied to Iran are also known to have procured agricultural land.
"Food security is national security, and we cannot allow foreign adversaries to influence our food supply while we stick our heads in the sand," added Newhouse, who is currently planning to introduce measures to update the USDA's internal reporting and data management processes to allow Congress to identify which foreign entities own the over 40 million acres of U.S. farmland.
Watch this video from GlennTV as he discusses how the world is taking over American land.
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National security, food supply at risk as foreign ownership of U.S. farmland continues to grow.
Sources include:
GAO.gov [PDF]
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