The GOP House has laid the ground work to form a committee aimed at investigating China’s purchases of U.S. land.
Leaders say that it is about more than just farmland purchases.
“How do we bring our jobs back from China to America? How do we secure out intellectual property? How do we make sure our farmland is protected? All of that would be brought up within this committee,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy explains.
“The acquisition of farmland to the consideration of rare Earth minerals industry, into one consolidated firm, the Chinese Communist Party continues to pose these challenges to America as we speak,” John Joyce adds.
The select committee will study China’s trade as well as economic, human rights, and security threats both overseas and here in the U.S.
Most purchases of U.S. farmland are made by allies like Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands, but experts say that China, Russia, and Iran accounted for 200,000 acres in 2019 with most being bought by China.
The South Dakota state legislature is also expected to take up foreign ag land ownership concerns in their new session.
Lobbyists with the South Dakota Farm Bureau say that the governor has a draft bill that would create a board to study foreign ag land purchase requests. They say it would be a five member board and their job would be to see if land purchases by foreign owners would hurt the state’s ag community in any way.
That board would then have the sole authoiry to say whether the deal can proceed or not.
The state’s Farm Bureau has no official stance on the proposed legislation.
