Smithfield Foods was acquired by Chinese billionaire Wang Rong’s WH Group in 2013. … [+]
China’s critics in the US say it has bought exorbitant amounts of American farmland. “As president, I would do everything in my power to sell off every inch of land China owns,” former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley wrote in an op-ed last year. But a report released this week by Cornell University says China’s land holdings are not as large as some politicians say.
Assistant Professor Wendong Chang and his colleagues found that countries the federal government classifies as “adversaries,” such as China, held just 1% of the roughly 40 million acres of foreign-owned farmland as of 2020. The study was based on a federal dataset of more than 40,000 cases of foreign investment in U.S. farmland.
Neighboring Canada has topped foreign countries when it comes to ownership of U.S. farmland. Canada owns about a third of U.S. farmland, much of it forested land in Maine and Michigan, which share the Canadian border, Cornell University said in a report Wednesday.
Cornell noted that the U.S. does not ban foreign ownership of land at the federal level. However, the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 requires foreign investors who acquire, transfer, or hold U.S. farmland (including leases of 10 years or more) to report their holdings and transactions to the Secretary of Agriculture, he said. Currently, 24 states restrict foreign ownership of land, but regulations vary by state, the report said.
“I became interested in this issue, and in particular Chinese ownership of US farmland, because it was gaining political attention,” Zhang said. “We’ve seen an increase in state-level legislation in places like Texas, Florida and Indiana. Given the rumors circulating, I wanted to look into the facts.”
“There is definitely a basis for closer scrutiny and greater concern” about foreign purchases of U.S. farmland, Zhang said. “While the percentage of land owned by foreigners has increased substantially over the past 20 years, the overall percentage is still fairly low.” Zhang is co-author of “Mapping and Contextualizing Foreign Ownership and Leasing of U.S. Farmland,” which will be published in the 2024 Journal of the American College of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers, Cornell University said.
One prominent Chinese investor is WH Group, controlled by billionaire Wan Long, which bought Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork processor and farmer, in 2013. Smithfield then bought California-based Clougherty Packing from Hormel Foods in 2017.
This year, Chinese billionaire Chen Tianqiao has come under intense scrutiny for his purchase of 198,000 acres of timberland in Oregon in 2015, which ranked him 82nd on Land Report magazine’s list of the 100 largest landowners in America. Chen’s Shanda Asset Management said in a statement in January that it “stricken strict compliance with all legal requirements and procedural standards regarding the purchase, including but not limited to proactively requesting review of the potential acquisition by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)… After a thorough investigation, CFIUS found no national security concerns and has closed its review.”
Chen Tianqiao, chairman of the Shandai Group. Photo by Sanjit Das/Bloomberg
“Shanda is a proud owner and steward of this land and has been committed to continuing its timber business and ensuring the health of the forest for the past eight years,” he added. Chen’s wife, Chrissy Luo, co-founder, president and vice chairwoman of Shanda Group, is a member of the California Academy of Sciences Board of Trustees and the China Leadership Committee of the UC San Diego Center for 21st Century China.
Long-term leases are a major driver of foreign interest in U.S. farmland, Cornell noted, and many foreign deals are actually related to renewable energy development.
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