Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced during a press conference with Trump administration officials that the U.S. will move to ban Chinese ownership of farmland.
Describing seven initiatives the USDA plans to implement to secure American agriculture, Rollins said the first is “securing and protecting American farmland ownership, actively engaging at every level of government to take swift legislative and executive action to ban the purchase of American farmland by Chinese nationals and other foreign adversaries.”
The USDA will further evaluate its policies to ensure it maintains an America-first agenda.
“USDA programs have a history of supporting other countries, and adversarial interests, including foreign adversaries seeking research and development funding,” Rollins explained. “Recent USDA policy allowed companies in foreign countries, even those from countries of concern, to be placed in the bio-preferred program catalog for mandatory federal purchasing and voluntary labeling initiatives. Those countries include China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia.”
The National Farm Security Action Plan, published on the USDA website, states that land owned by foreign nationals constitutes a “potential threat to national security and future economic prosperity.”
“USDA will ensure transparency of foreign U.S. agricultural land ownership and pursue robust and overdue updates to data collection, reporting, and analysis,” the plan states. The agency will also work with state and federal-level partners to “take swift legislative or executive action to end the direct or indirect purchase or control of American farmland by nationals from countries of concern or other foreign adversaries.”
The USDA called the plan a “real response” to a “real threat” against U.S. agricultural security.
