A congresswoman from Texas has introduced legislation aimed at preventing foreign adversaries, particularly China, from buying U.S. farmland.
Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas), a member of the House Committee on Ways and Means, introduced the legislation on June 9. Known as the Protecting American Farmland Act (
H.R.3996), the bill would amend the U.S. tax code to prevent undisclosed purchases of U.S. farmland by imposing a 60 percent excise tax on “country of concern” buyers.
“China is relentlessly trying to undermine our country—whether it’s poisoning our citizens with fentanyl smuggled in through our southern border, spying on us, or filling the global stage that has been left empty by the Biden Administration,” Van Duyne
said in a statement accompanying the bill’s introduction.
“American farmland—especially here in Texas—is the new front line in our fight against the Chinese Communist Party’s aggressions. I’m glad to join Chairman Jason Smith in introducing this bill to keep our farmland from enemy hands, protecting our nation’s farmers, supply chains, and security.”
According to the language of the bill (
pdf), a “country of concern” is defined as any nation that “is engaged in a long-term pattern or serious instances of conduct significantly adverse to the national security of the United States.” The bill names China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela as countries of concern.
China owned 383,935 acres of U.S. agricultural land as of the end of 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (
pdf). That was only 0.9 percent of the total foreign-held land at the time, but the reported acreage owned by China has increased by more than 50 percent from the end of 2018 (
pdf), Van Duyne said.
“We must protect America’s agricultural resources from being snatched up by foreign adversaries and companies under their control,” Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said in a
statement.
“To prevent the Chinese Communist Party and other hostile foreign governments from staking claim to U.S. farmland, Representative Van Duyne’s bill expands an existing tax on foreign land sales and ratchets up the applicable tax rate by 400 percent. By protecting our agricultural land, we will increase our food and economic security.”
In recent months, other bills have been introduced in the
House and the
Senate to block China from buying U.S. farmland.
Chinese Land Purchases
In 2022, Fufeng Group, a China-based agribusiness with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), purchased 300 acres of land a dozen miles from the Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota. The company’s plan to build a wet corn milling and biofermentation plant on the land was
struck down in February when the Grand Forks City Council voted unanimously to terminate the construction plan over national security concerns.
In Texas, a Chinese former military official has
purchased about 140,000 acres of farmland in
Val Verde County, which is home to the U.S. Laughlin Air Force Base. His company has said that it would use the land to build a wind turbine farm.
A legislative attempt to address the issue recently failed to make it to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk. The state legislation,
SB 147 by Republican Sen. Lois Kolkhorst,
passed the Senate in April, but it
failed to pass out of the House State Affairs Committee before the end of the regular legislative session in late May.
Before the bill expired, Republican state Rep. Tony Tinderholt
took to Twitter to criticize the holdup in the House.
“The Texas House is killing SB 147, which would keep the Chinese from purchasing our farm land,” Tinderholt wrote on May 16. “China wants the power to sit on our food supply. They are our adversary.
“The Senate passed a ban. The Texas House is sitting on it while passing Democrat bills every day.”
Christian human rights group China Aid, the Independent Cattlemen’s Association of Texas, the Oil and Gas Workers Association, and Texans for Strong Borders are among several groups that have
voiced support for SB 147.
According to Texas Scorecard, Texans for Strong Borders sent fortune cookies to every House office on May 22, with a mock message from the CCP telling Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan “thank you” for not passing the legislation.
The advocacy group posted a picture of the fortune cookies on
Twitter and wrote, “Today we ensured House offices know the Chinese Communist Party is happy about this.”
