🚨 FETTERMAN JOINS REPUBLICANS TO BLOCK CHINA FROM BUYING U.S. FARMLAND — AND THE BIPARTISAN CRACKDOWN IS GAINING SERIOUS MOMENTUM… |
DEMOCRATS JOIN REPUBLICANS TO TIGHTEN CHINESE FARMLAND RULES — BUT BEIJING IS NOT 'BUYING UP' AMERICA
ad-free version here:A bipartisan fight over foreign ownership of American farmland is gaining new momentum in Washington, with Democrats joining Republicans in arguing that agriculture, land near military installations and the nation's food supply should receive tougher national-security scrutiny.
That political development is real. Senators including John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan have joined Republicans on legislation aimed at tightening disclosure rules, expanding federal review and increasing scrutiny of agricultural purchases linked to foreign adversaries such as China.
The strongest version of the argument is straightforward: food security can become a national-security issue, especially when foreign-controlled entities acquire land near sensitive military or critical-infrastructure sites.
But some of the viral rhetoric goes much further than the evidence. The latest USDA data do not show China rapidly swallowing American farmland. Chinese-linked investors reported about 247,659 acres at the end of 2024 — roughly 0.03 percent of U.S. agricultural land and less than one percent of all foreign-held agricultural acreage.
Chinese-linked holdings have also fallen from their 2021 peak. That does not eliminate legitimate security concerns, but it changes the scale of the story.
There is a defensible national-security case for tighter scrutiny of foreign-adversary land purchases. There is not a factual basis for saying the Chinese government is currently buying up a large share of American farmland.
This Is Genuinely Bipartisan
The most important correction to the partisan framing is that concern about foreign-adversary ownership of agricultural land is no longer confined to Republicans.
In March 2025, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst and Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin led the bipartisan FARMLAND Act, with Democratic Sen. John Fetterman later joining as a cosponsor alongside Republicans Ted Budd and Rick Scott.
The bill would strengthen the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act, expand federal review of significant farmland transactions, improve reporting and transparency and make food security a more explicit part of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States process.
Fetterman has also joined Republicans on the FARM Act, which is aimed at ensuring the Agriculture Department has a permanent role in reviewing foreign investments affecting the food and agriculture sector.
He separately cosponsored Sen. Pete Ricketts' AFIDA Improvements Act, another measure designed to improve federal tracking and enforcement involving foreign-owned agricultural land.
Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto has likewise partnered with Republican Sen. Mike Rounds on the PASS Act, which targets purchases by entities controlled by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea near military installations and other sensitive sites.
Farm Bill 2.0 Shows the Issue Has Moved Toward the Mainstream
The bipartisan push is not just a collection of press releases.
In July 2026, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman released a Farm Bill 2.0 discussion draft incorporating more than 100 bipartisan priorities.
Among the proposals listed in the draft were the FARMLAND Act, the FARM Act and the AFIDA Improvements Act.
That does not mean those measures have all become law. A discussion draft is part of the legislative process, and Congress still has to agree on final statutory language.
But their inclusion demonstrates that foreign farmland ownership has become a mainstream agriculture and national-security issue rather than a fringe talking point.
It is accurate to say bipartisan legislation is advancing through the policy process. It is premature to describe every proposed restriction as already enacted federal law.
How Much U.S. Agricultural Land Is Actually Chinese-Linked?
The latest USDA annual report covering holdings through December 31, 2024 provides the most useful national baseline.
Foreign investors as a whole reported interests in roughly 46 million acres of U.S. agricultural land.
Chinese primary investors reported approximately 247,659 acres.
That is a very small share of the American agricultural base — approximately 0.03 percent of U.S. agricultural land and less than one percent of total foreign-held agricultural acreage.
Canada, not China, is by far the largest foreign source of reported U.S. agricultural holdings. Investors from the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom also hold substantially more acreage than Chinese investors.
The Trend Is Not a Straight Line Up
The phrase that Beijing has spent years 'snapping up acreage' suggests a continuing surge.
The actual trend is more complicated.
USDA data showed 277,336 acres linked to Chinese investors at the end of 2023.
The 2024 figure was about 247,659 acres, meaning the reported total declined.
Chinese-linked acreage had previously reached a peak of roughly 383,935 acres in 2021.
The American Farm Bureau Federation has noted that the decline partly reflects divestments and USDA corrections to records that had previously been attributed to Chinese investors.
The largest historical jump was also heavily influenced by the 2013 acquisition of Smithfield Foods by China's WH Group, which brought large existing U.S. agricultural holdings under Chinese corporate ownership in a single transaction.
Chinese investment in U.S. agriculture increased significantly over the past decade, but the latest data show Chinese-linked farmland holdings declining from their 2021 peak rather than continuously accelerating.
Chinese-Linked Ownership Is Not the Same as Direct Ownership by Beijing
Another distinction matters.
USDA's farmland database tracks foreign persons and entities, including corporations with foreign ownership interests.
The largest Chinese-linked holdings have historically been associated with companies such as Smithfield-related entities and private corporate investors.
USDA's 2023 report specifically stated that there were no farmland filings directly by the government of China.
The latest 2024 data continue to describe the acreage in terms of Chinese investors and ownership interests rather than reporting a massive portfolio held directly by the Chinese state.
That does not make corporate holdings automatically harmless. U.S. national-security law frequently looks at control, beneficial ownership and connections to foreign governments.
But saying 'the Chinese government is competing with American farmers for the land beneath their boots' is stronger than the public ownership data establish.
The Security Concern Near Military Bases Is More Concrete
The most persuasive national-security argument is not about the nationwide percentage of farmland.
It is about location.
A relatively small parcel can create a serious problem if it sits next to a military installation, missile field, communications hub or other sensitive facility.
The most famous example involved Fufeng USA, a subsidiary of a China-based company, which acquired hundreds of acres near Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota for a proposed corn-milling project.
CFIUS initially concluded that the transaction fell outside its jurisdiction under the rules then in effect.
The Air Force later warned that the proposed project presented a significant threat to national security because of its proximity to the base.
Grand Forks officials ultimately blocked the project, and the company later reported disposing of the land and related assets.
That Episode Exposed a Real Federal Oversight Gap
The Grand Forks controversy became a powerful argument for lawmakers who said the federal review system had not kept pace with modern security risks.
The problem was not that Fufeng owned a huge percentage of American farmland.
The problem was that a foreign-linked industrial project could be proposed near a highly sensitive military installation while the federal government's main foreign-investment review body initially lacked jurisdiction to fully review the land transaction.
Congress and successive administrations have since moved to broaden CFIUS real-estate jurisdiction and improve coordination with USDA.
That is a substantially stronger policy argument than claiming that national food production is already controlled by China.
GAO Found the Government's Farmland Tracking System Needed Work
Federal watchdog findings also support calls for better transparency.
The Government Accountability Office found weaknesses in USDA's administration of the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act, including problems with data reliability, verification and timely sharing of information with other federal agencies.
USDA later increased data-mining and compliance work.
By late 2024, the department said it had removed more than one hundred outdated records totaling over 21,000 acres after determining that the land was no longer foreign-held even though disposition reports had not been filed.
That episode demonstrates two things at once.
Foreign ownership deserves better monitoring, and headline numbers can also be wrong or stale when reporting systems are weak.
Better enforcement of foreign-land disclosure rules is justified partly because the existing database has contained errors. The same data-quality problem is a reason not to treat every viral acreage figure as precise or current.
American Farmers Really Are Under Financial Pressure
The broader economic frustration in rural America is also real.
Farmers have faced high financing costs, expensive inputs, weak margins in several commodity sectors, volatile export markets and the effects of retaliatory trade measures.
Recent reporting on the 2026 farm economy has documented operations struggling with high borrowing costs and difficult commodity economics.
Those pressures help explain why land affordability and outside investment resonate politically.
But the public evidence does not show Chinese farmland purchases as a major nationwide driver of the financial crisis facing American farmers.
Chinese-linked acreage is simply too small a share of the overall land market to support the claim that U.S. producers across the country are broadly being priced out by Chinese buyers.
Farmers face genuine cost and profitability problems. It would be misleading to identify Chinese farmland ownership as a proven major cause of those nationwide pressures.
The Best Policy Target Is Foreign Adversaries, Not Foreigners as a Class
Lawmakers also have to distinguish national-security regulation from blanket hostility toward foreign ownership.
Foreign investors collectively hold tens of millions of acres of U.S. agricultural land, much of it associated with allied countries and long-term commercial activity.
Many proposals therefore focus on countries formally treated as foreign adversaries or on transactions near sensitive facilities rather than banning every foreign person from owning agricultural property.
That distinction matters legally and economically.
A Canadian forestry company, a European renewable-energy lease and a China-linked acquisition next to a military base do not present identical security questions.
The strongest legislation uses beneficial ownership, government control, location, transaction size and security sensitivity to determine which deals deserve heightened review.
Trump's USDA Has Made Farmland Security a Formal Policy Priority
The Trump administration has also made foreign farmland and agricultural security a formal part of USDA's national-security agenda.
USDA's Farm Security Action Plan calls for tougher enforcement of AFIDA, better verification of foreign ownership information, coordination with state governments and closer partnership with CFIUS.
The department has also launched a new electronic reporting portal intended to improve the quality and speed of foreign-land disclosures.
Those actions align with the bipartisan legislative effort even though Democrats and Republicans may disagree sharply on other parts of Trump's agriculture and China policies.
Bipartisanship Does Not Mean Every China Claim Is Automatically True
The fact that Democrats such as Fetterman and Slotkin are working with Republicans strengthens the case that the issue deserves serious attention.
It does not validate every dramatic claim made around it.
China is the United States' principal strategic competitor and the Chinese Communist Party maintains extensive influence over major Chinese businesses.
That creates legitimate reasons for scrutiny.
But national-security policy works best when it identifies specific vulnerabilities rather than inflating the scale of the threat.
A few hundred thousand acres in strategically sensitive locations may warrant tougher rules even though the same acreage is nowhere close to controlling America's food supply.
What the Strongest Bipartisan Position Looks Like
A defensible bipartisan position can be stated without exaggeration.
Foreign adversaries should not be able to exploit gaps in U.S. law to acquire land next to sensitive military installations.
The federal government should know who ultimately controls agricultural property, should receive timely and accurate disclosures and should be able to review suspicious transactions before they become security problems.
USDA should have a meaningful role when CFIUS evaluates agricultural and food-system transactions.
Congress can also debate targeted restrictions on entities controlled by hostile governments.
Those policies do not depend on claiming that China already owns a large share of American farmland.
What Can Actually Be Said With Confidence
There is genuine bipartisan momentum in Congress to strengthen federal oversight of foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land.
Democratic senators including John Fetterman and Elissa Slotkin have joined Republicans on major farmland-security legislation.
The Senate Agriculture Committee's July 2026 Farm Bill 2.0 discussion draft incorporated the FARMLAND Act, the FARM Act and the AFIDA Improvements Act among its bipartisan priorities.
The latest USDA data show roughly 46 million acres of U.S. agricultural land held by foreign investors overall.
Chinese primary investors reported approximately 247,659 acres at the end of 2024.
That represents about 0.03 percent of American agricultural land and less than one percent of foreign-held acreage.
Chinese-linked holdings declined from 277,336 acres in 2023 and from a higher 2021 peak.
Canada and several European countries hold far more U.S. agricultural acreage than Chinese investors.
The largest Chinese-linked holdings are corporate interests; the public USDA record has not shown the Chinese government directly filing ownership of a large U.S. farmland portfolio.
National-security concerns can nevertheless be serious when China-linked property is located close to military installations or other sensitive sites.
The Fufeng project near Grand Forks Air Force Base demonstrated a real gap in federal review authority and became an important catalyst for reform.
GAO has also found significant weaknesses in the federal system for tracking and sharing foreign agricultural land data.
American farmers are under real financial pressure from input costs, credit conditions, trade disruptions and weak margins in parts of agriculture.
There is not evidence that Chinese farmland ownership is a major nationwide cause of those pressures.
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So the strongest defensible version of the argument is not that Beijing has been steadily buying up America's farms or already threatens to control the national food supply.
It is that a small amount of strategically placed foreign-adversary land can still create outsized security risks — and Democrats and Republicans increasingly agree that the United States should close those gaps before the next sensitive transaction occurs.
