Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., a member of the House Select Committee on the CCP, said the United States has to stop China from continuing to buy up American farmland.
“The CCP owns over 380,000 acres of farmland in the U.S., worth about $2 billion," Newhouse said in an Aug. 4 post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Their pattern of aggression poses immediate risks to our food supply chains & national security, & we must take action to stop them."
Newhouse and Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, wrote an opinion piece for Fox News, warning “the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the greatest geopolitical threat that we face, and their threats have been growing exponentially in recent years.”
They said the CCP's consistent aggression, seen in activities like surveillance, genocide, pandemic origin cover-up, intellectual property theft, Taiwan coercion and fentanyl trade, displays a deliberate pattern targeting global freedom, the opinion piece said. They also said Americans should be concerned with the fact the CCP has amassed a substantial amount of U.S. farmland.
“Foreign investors now hold interest in more than 37 million acres of U.S. farmland – a region larger than the state of Iowa," Newhouse and Feenstra wrote to Fox News. "According to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the CCP currently owns over 380,000 acres of farmland in the United States, which is worth about $2 billion. Even more shocking, the CCP has increased their purchases by a factor of 10 over the last decade.”
They urged Americans to wake up and defend the nation against foreign powers attempting to buy up large portions of land, according to their opinion piece.
Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., and Sen. John Tester, D-Mont., introduced an amendment which was ultimately added to the annual national defense bill July 25, according to a Federal Newswire report. The amendment prohibits foreign adversaries, such as China, Iran, North Korea and Russia, from making future purchases of American agricultural land. The amendment passed on a bipartisan vote of 91-7, and specifically focuses on the fact that China was surrounding U.S. military bases with their purchases.
Steve Yates, previously a national security advisor in the Bush administration, had similar thoughts on the CCP buying American farmland, according to a November 2022 Federal Newswire report.
"No one but American citizens have an inherent right to property within our sovereign borders," Yates said to Federal Newswire. "It's a privilege. And it's a privilege that we open up to others, it can be good for Americans to have foreign direct investment, cooperation, et cetera. But should that cooperation extend to those who explicitly threaten our civilization, threaten our sovereignty, threaten our economy? Why in the world would we allow them to buy our agricultural land? Why would we allow them to buy land near military bases in the United States? They don't have this right."
