IN-DEPTH: Battle for the Heartland—How US Farmland Is Quietly Falling Into Chinese Hands

Chinese ownership of US agricultural land saw a 2,400 percent increase in one decade

Dust rises from a combine during barley harvest in Reardan, Wash., on Sept. 26, 2016. In one decade, Chinese ownership of U.S. agricultural lands increased by more than 2,400 percent. Getty Images

The valleys give way to the prairies, and the prairies give way to the badlands, where fields of golden cinquefoils surrender to the might of towering plateaus of striated bedrock.

The rugged openness of South Dakota presents the quintessential image of the American countryside, a pure distillation of the natural environment that captured the pioneers’ hope for a better future all those years ago.