On December 14 the U.S. Department of Agriculture published the findings of their yearly study to determine the amount of agricultural land held by foreign persons for the year 2022.
The USDA creates this yearly report under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA). This Act requires any foreign investors who buy U.S. agricultural land to report this to the Secretary of Agriculture.
According to the study, foreign persons held 43.4 million acres of American agricultural land by the end of 2022. This equates to 3.4 percent of total privately owned agricultural land in America and 2 percent of the total land in America.
The report also said that in 2022 foreign holdings of U.S. agricultural land increased by 3.4 million acres.
In the study, agricultural land is split into three different types— forest land, cropland, and pasture land. In 2022, 48 percent of foreign-held agricultural acres was forest land, 28 percent was cropland, and pasture land was 21 percent, while non-agricultural land totaled 2 percent.
In recent years there has been a dramatic spike in the growth rate of foreign-held agricultural land.
The USDA said that from 2012 through 2017, the average increase of foreign-held agricultural land was 0.6 million acres per year. From 2017 through 2022, foreign-held agricultural land increased by an average of 2.9 million acres annually.
The countries with investors who own the highest percentage of foreign-held agricultural land are Canada at 32 percent (14.2 million acres), the Netherlands (12 percent), Italy (6 percent), the United Kingdom (6 percent), and Germany (5 percent).
The report specifies that Chinese investors hold less than 1 percent of foreign-held agricultural land in the United States. There were no filings by the Chinese government.
The two Chinese-owned companies with the most acres of agricultural land were Brazos Highland Properties LP (102,345 acres) and Murphy Brown LLC (Smithfield Foods) (97,975 acres).
The report explained that 30 million acres of foreign-held agricultural land is foreign-owned. The rest (approximately 14 million acres) is held under a long-term lease.
Roughly 66 percent of the 30 million foreign-owned acres are operated by the owner. That would leave 18 million acres of agricultural land in America being operated by a foreign entity.
Are we going to buy produce from foreign countries that was grown here in America, probably picked by foreign labor??? This is wrong any way you look at it.
Stop this!
The problem isn’t foreign countries— it’s greedy Americans that are selling out their own country.
Apply Imminent Domain and seize these land for public good — the Government would seize your land at the drop of a hat if they wanted it.