Chinese buying US farmland

[Ernie]

https://www.newsnationnow.com/world/chi ... elections/

55% increase in the last five years.

[Ken]

Why are we concerned about the Chinese investors when they are a very tiny fraction of total foreign holdings of farmland. From the US Farm Bureau's 2023 report on the subject: https://www.fb.org/market-intel/foreign ... st-numbers

3.1% of US agricultural land is foreign-owned



In terms of foreign ownership, the Chinese are in a distant 16th place at 0.03% of US farmland. Even Luxembourg investors own double the amount of farmland as Chinese investors.




NOTE: I expect most of these are actually corporate investors and those are just the locations where the corporations are located, not necessarily the nationalities of the owners of the corporations. I would guess that some (perhaps much?) foreign ownership of US farmland is laundered through US corporations and so wouldn't show up here. In other words, foreigners set up a shell corporation in Delaware and that shell corporation (which is a US entity) buys real estate or farmland. As long as the taxes get paid, the government doesn't much care.

[MaxPC]

https://www.newsnationnow.com/world/chi ... elections/

55% increase in the last five years.

Indeed, much of that land that is purchased by China is within a few miles of US military bases. UK intelligence has picked up that the land is being used to recon US military bases as well as may house jamming equipment to disrupt missile guidance systems.

[Ken]

It is actually a garbage article. None of the links actually point to evidence supporting the claims made in the article. Go ahead, open the article and click the first couple of links about Chinese land purchases. They don't point to any evidence supporting the claims being made.

And they make no distinction between land purchases by people who happen to be Chinese versus purchases by China (the government). If I buy a piece of land in Mexico does that mean the US is buying land in Mexico?

There may well be national security issues with Chinese buying land in the US but the article doesn't actually point to any.

ON the other hand, the US Farm Bureau has actually done enormous amounts of research into foreign ownership of US farmland and there is a whole lot more of it in the link I provided from where those graphs are from. If you read what they say about the actual investments, it is the following:

According to AFIDA data, about 131,000 acres located in Texas represent the largest single parcel owned by a Chinese-based billionaire investor. Previous news coverage states the individual purchased the land for a wind farm, with an additional 30,000-acre parcel in the same county. The cited article reports that the project was ultimately halted by a state law designed to stop foreigners from accessing the Texas electricity grid. Second to these Chinese-owned Texas properties, which make up over 40% of Chinese-investor-owned U.S. ag land, are the properties of a Virginia-based U.S. pork processing company that was was acquired by a Chinese-owned firm in 2013. These properties account for over 146,000 acres of U.S. agricultural land spread across nine different states. Nearly 49,000 acres owned by this pork processor are located in North Carolina, 33,500 acres are located in Utah and 13,300 acres are located in Virginia. Third, a land asset management and global real estate investment company headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, and includes Chinese investors, owns over 30,000 acres spread across seven states but primarily in Texas (16,300 acres) and Arizona (9,500 acres). Additionally, a global seed and pesticide company acquired by a Chinese-owned firm in 2017 holds close to 6,000 acres of land across 16 states primarily used to conduct research to develop and deliver seed and crop protection products for farmers around the globe.

[Josh]

Yes, but sensational headlines like this get the conservative right wing base fired up about what an impending threat “China” is.

[MaxPC]

Yes, but sensational headlines like this get the conservative right wing base fired up about what an impending threat “China” is.

That may be re sensationalism.

However there has been a decade or more of concern over China's agenda of belligerence, sabre rattling, call it what you will; and it's purchase of farmland within close proximity of military bases. It does elicit legitimate red flags within the UK intelligence community. There have been Chinese purchases of small, independent airports as well.

[RZehr]

I don’t doubt that China would love to spy on America through their land purchases etc.

But to put the topic of foreign owned American land and companies in perspective, Americans and American corporations own far, far, more foreign land and corporate investments in other countries, than the other way around. Americans have far more control of other country’s assets.

[Ken]

I don’t doubt that China would love to spy on America through their land purchases etc.

But to put the topic of foreign owned American land and companies in perspective, Americans and American corporations own far, far, more foreign land and corporate investments in other countries, than the other way around. Americans have far more control of other country’s assets.

Couple of comments.

First, if the Chinese are actually using land bases to spy then I have absolutely no doubt that they will carefully hide their tracks and do so through US corporations and intermediaries. So US corporation incorporated in Delaware owned by a Cayman Islands Trust owned by a corporation based in Luxembourg using money funneled through Switzerland or some such. They are not stupid. They aren't going to walk into some real estate office specializing in rural land sales and say "Hi, we are Chinese and want buy dis land"

Secondly, we don't actually know who owns much of the land in the US since much of it is owned by shell corporations, trusts, and the like. And our laws accommodate, even facilitate that sort of thing. I don't think that is a good thing. But it is a far bigger issue than just China. We should probably re-evaluate our corporate secrecy laws and accommodation of things like shell corporations.

I have no doubt that the Chinese are spying on US interests around the world, just as we are no doubt doing the same to them. But I doubt that rural farmland is a very important way that they are doing so, if at all. This isn't WW2 when we actually had things like secret bases and airfields. Today with satellites and digital communications there aren't so many physical secrets. The secrets that exist are mostly electronic.

[Soloist]

Honestly there is very little you could get next to a base that you couldn’t get by a drive by or a satellite.
The bases that are actually doing anything classified have a healthy perimeter.

[Ken]

Honestly there is very little you could get next to a base that you couldn’t get by a drive by or a satellite.
The bases that are actually doing anything classified have a healthy perimeter.

Yep. The biggest military base in the Pacific Northwest is Joint Base Lewis-McCord (formerly Fort Lewis and McCord Air Force Base) south Tacoma.

Interstate 5, the biggest freeway west of Chicago goes right through it and there are bazillions of businesses all along the perimeter from pawn shops and strip clubs to fast food and big box retailers. I'm not sure what good nearby farmland would do when you can just pop a listening device onto the top of a Target store or some such. If there was even any point in doing that.