China doesn’t need to invade America to control its farmland. It just needs to buy it.
Through state-backed conglomerates, shell companies and global acquisitions, Beijing is doing just that, gaining fiduciary leverage over farmland across our nation and threatening America’s long-term food security. It is clear that more must be done to prevent the Chinese Communist Party, our foremost global competitor, from weakening America’s agricultural independence from within.
In Washington, D.C., agriculture is treated as just another domestic policy issue. In the Midwest, though, we know it’s far more than that — it’s a strategic sector that sustains our economy, drives our global competitiveness and anchors our national security. Yet today, that foundation is under growing pressure from a determined foreign adversary.
Take the global seed and agrochemical market. Four firms dominate this space: one in the United States, two in Germany and Syngenta Group, which is owned by China’s state-run ChemChina. Farmers across the heartland rely on these companies for seeds, herbicides, crop-protection products and increasingly the data platforms that drive precision agriculture. But Syngenta is beholden to Chinese state interests.
The reality is that no Chinese company is truly private, whether it operates in China or abroad. Under Chinese law, every Chinese-owned company must provide any and all available data to Beijing’s intelligence services upon request. In the context of agriculture, that means soil analytics, yield projections, geospatial planting data and input-usage patterns collected by Chinese-linked entities operating in the U.S. ultimately exist within the legal reach of the CCP.
The challenge is not limited to seed and data. China now controls nearly 90% of the global vitamin and amino acid supply used in livestock feed relied on by poultry, pork, and cattle producers across states such as Missouri and Illinois. Its holdings include America’s largest pork producer and processer, Smithfield Foods, which was purchased a decade ago by China’s WH Group, formerly Shuanghui International. The acquisition gave Beijing direct visibility into, and partial control over, a vital link in the American food chain.
From this perch, China could decide to divert exports, slow production or prioritize foreign shipments over domestic supply, tightening the market and driving prices up for American consumers overnight. Far from being a routine business transaction, the purchase of Smithfield Foods by a Chinese conglomerate places a significant portion of America’s protein infrastructure under the control of a foreign adversary.
Shares fence with Whiteman Air Force base
Perhaps the gravest concern to American food security, though, is China’s acquisition of U.S. farmland. Chinese entities have expanded their U.S. holdings from negligible levels a decade ago to more than 275,000 acres by 2023, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. While that represents a mere fraction of the totality of U.S. farmland, the concern emanates not from the acreage, but rather from the strategic locations this land occupies. Chinese farmland purchases often cluster near rail hubs, export terminals, energy nodes, and military installations.
And it’s not just farmland. A recent report revealed that Missouri’s own Whiteman Air Force Base, home of America’s B-2 bomber fleet, shares a fence with a trailer park linked to a convicted fraudster with CCP intelligence ties. When CCP-linked entities buy property near critical logistics infrastructure or defense sites, they’re creating an opportunity to disrupt the systems that our economic stability and national security depend on.
A sensible policy response to these predations does not require alarmism. It calls for clear-eyed risk management and a recognition from the federal, state and local governments that farmland is a vital strategic asset.
First, the U.S. should prevent entities tied to adversarial foreign governments from purchasing farmland near sensitive military sites or acquiring companies that hold critical agricultural data.
Second, Chinese-owned agricultural companies should receive the same level of scrutiny that U.S. regulators already apply in other critical sectors.
Third, we must diversify and rebuild domestic production of critical inputs, especially livestock vitamins, amino acids and crop-protection chemicals, so that producers in the Midwest are not dependent on a foreign adversary supplier.
Fourth, the U.S. should emphasize reciprocity in its dealings with the CCP. China does not allow U.S. companies to buy land, let alone strategic assets like farmland, so why should we allow China to do so here?
Farmers from the plains to the prairie are not asking for protectionism. They are asking for a policy environment that recognizes the strategic importance of the work they do. Protecting them from unnecessary exposure to foreign adversaries is a commonsense step to ensure they can operate on a level playing field. Leaders at the federal, state and local level must do better on their behalf.
James B. Skinner is a national security fellow at the 501(c)(3) nonprofit American Foreign Policy Council and chief executive officer of AGS Security LLC. He served on the White House National Security Council from 2019 to 2021 and at the U.S. Department of Defense from 2018 to 2019.