An Unlikely Front in the Battle with China

In 2023, it seems the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is less and less concerned with hiding its espionage and attempts to destabilize the United States. With the early February sighting of a confirmed Chinese surveillance balloon, which drifted across the U.S. for a week until it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina, perhaps more Americans are aware of the threat China poses to United States security. But while the eyes of many have been trained on the skies, the communist nation has been at work right under our feet.

In Illinois and across the United States, China has for years been buying up farmland. Official figures from the start of 2020 show China controlling about 192,000 acres of agricultural land in the U.S., which may not seem like much, but that number continues to grow at an alarming rate.

On a larger scale, according to a report from the U.S. Congressional Research Service, “foreign persons and entities held an interest in 40.8 million acres of U.S. agricultural land in 2021, accounting for 3.1% of total privately owned land.” Investigate Midwest, an independent, nonprofit newsroom found that “the USDA largely relies on volunteer reporting,” and that a database of foreign land ownership revealed “3.1 million acres without an owner listed.” It seems the USDA’s system is no system at all, and the consequences could be far-reaching.

One conservative U.S. Representative from Illinois, Mary Miller (IL-15) is taking a stand, having introduced in February H.R. 840, the “Saving American Farms from Adversaries Act.” Rep. Miller and her husband are farmers from Oakland, Illinois, and she serves on the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, making her a knowledgeable voice on this crucial piece of legislation.

According to the text of the bill, in Illinois alone, “Foreign companies and individuals have purchased 853,813 acres of agricultural land…worth approximately $6.3 billion.” So, what is the danger? In an article from Breitbart, Rep. Miller is quoted as saying, “As a farmer, I know that foreign land purchases are especially an issue in rural America where the Chinese Communist Party is attempting to buy land in our country to gain strategic leverage over the United States and our food supply.” Concerning current federal policies that actually encourage the foreign purchase of American lands, U.S. Representative Dan Newhouse (R-WA) said, “The current trend in the U.S. is leading us toward the creation of a Chinese-owned agricultural land monopoly.”

From an economic perspective, when outsiders with massive budgets purchase land and farms, they bid up prices, artificially driving costs up for American farmers. Chinese purchases of homes and apartments are having the same effect on rural families, increasing the cost of renting, and putting home or farm ownership out of reach (this is also addressed in H.R. 840). And as far as national security goes, some of the CCP’s rural land purchases have been in proximity to U.S. military bases. What could go wrong?

It’s bad enough that American farmers suffer under onerous regulation at the hands of the USDA and other government agencies. If this bill fails, it is certain the Biden administration’s weak foreign policy will not only endanger the nation’s future on the world stage but also pave the way for even greater pressure on the men and women in so-called “flyover country”—truly, the backbone of our nation.

According to the (unreliable) figures that are currently available, China is by no means the United States’ largest foreign agricultural landholder. However, since the communist nation is widely held to present the greatest menace to the United States on a variety of fronts, and given the increasingly blatant threats we’ve seen recently, it’s entirely appropriate to investigate and put a stop to the CCP’s purchasing of American land.

We’ll let Rep. Miller have the last word:

“Our adversaries continue to rob our country of wealth and prosperity under Joe Biden’s weak leadership. Congress must respond to the critical economic and national security threats China poses to our nation because Joe Biden refuses to put America’s safety and best interests first. America is on a dangerous path of losing our self-sufficiency in farming, and we must take the threat of China’s provocation seriously by passing the Saving American Farms from Adversaries Act.”

TAKE ACTION: Call your U.S. Congressmember and ask him/her to please co-sponsor H.R. 840. It is important they our federal lawmakers hear from us about this national security proposal. The rest of Illinois’ Congressional delegation should have no problem signing on to this legislation.