Virginia Moves to Ban China From Buying Farmland

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, here speaking in Smithfield, Va., in October 2022, is not on the commonwealth's 2023 ballot but his lobbying for a 15-week abortion ban puts him and abortion on voters' minds as they go to the polls in November in what is beiung called "the first election of 2024." Alex Wong/Getty Images

Virginia will ban foreign adversaries, including China, from buying agricultural land in the commonwealth after legislators in the House of Delegates and Senate recently approved versions of the proposal and sent the measure to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin for his expected signature. The ban would be retroactively effective from Jan. 1.

Prohibiting China from buying farmland in Virginia tops Youngkin’s legislative agenda this year.

“Virginians—not the CCP [Chinese Communist Party]—should own the rich and vibrant agricultural lands God has blessed us with. That is why I am asking the General Assembly to send me a bill to prohibit dangerous foreign entities tied to the CCP from purchasing Virginia farmland,” he said in his State of the Commonwealth address at the beginning of the 2023 legislative session. “The stakes are too high, and the consequences are too great.”

The law will also require Virginia’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) to publish an annual report of foreign land ownership to the governor and General Assembly. The inaugural report is due on the VDACS website by July 1. The law, once enacted, won’t affect any transactions that were completed before this year.

Virginia’s definition of foreign adversaries follows the Department of Commerce’s designation. Along with China, the current list also includes Cuba, Russia, North Korea, and a Venezuelan politician.

Chinese entities owned about 14,000 acres of agricultural land in Virginia as of the end of 2021,  according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Most of that is tied to the 2013 purchase of Smithfield Foods Inc., the largest pork producer in the United States.

However, foreign land ownership reporting to the USDA has been largely an honor system; the reporting requirements aren’t always enforced. While the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act stipulates that the penalty for failing to report foreign land ownership can be as much as a quarter of the property’s market value, in reality, the USDA often reduces the penalty amount significantly because of concern over disincentivizing filing.

For example, the resulting fine for a Chinese company’s failure to report a land purchase associated with the Blue Hills Wind Farm project in Texas was slashed to $120,000 from $21 million.

As of February, 28 states don’t have any restrictions on foreign ownership of agricultural land, according to the University of Arkansas’s National Agricultural Law Center. While Virginia will soon prohibit Chinese entities from owning any interest in its agricultural land, measures in Texas and Florida seek to restrict any Chinese real estate purchase, including farmland.

An aerial view of a farm in Florida City, Fla., on Apr. 1, 2020. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Protecting Military Assets

Instead of the acreage, Youngkin emphasized the military assets in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

“In Virginia, we’re standing up strong,“ he told Fox News on Feb. 26. ”We’re going to make sure that our agricultural farmland is not purchased by the CCP.

“We’ve got a bill now through on a bipartisan basis that I will sign that will keep China from buying our agricultural farmland, particularly next to our national strategic assets like the Pentagon, Quantico, and the largest naval base in the world.

“We’re going to make sure that we keep these national strategic assets safe.”

Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said the measure will be signed into law in the coming weeks.

“The governor has been clear since day one that Virginians, their tax dollars, and their farmland should not enrich the CCP or dangerous foreign entities at the expense of national security,” she told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Earlier this year, a corn mill proposal by a Chinese-based company in Grand Forks, North Dakota, was terminated after the U.S. Air Force warned that the project, which was to be on land within 15 miles of the Grand Forks Air Force Base, posed a “significant threat to national security.”

After the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a federal panel charged with reviewing foreign acquisitions for national security risks, decided in December 2022 that it didn’t have jurisdiction to probe the land purchase, the controversial project came to a screeching halt following the Air Force’s input.