Concerns about Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland, or U.S. reliance on China for imported food, are driven entirely by paranoid xenophobia and have no legitimate basis in reality.
Only about 0.03% of U.S agricultural imports come from China, about $9.5 billion in 2022 (about $28 per person per year in the U.S.) most of which is snack food. China actually imports $34 billion in U.S. agricultural goods (as of 2023, down from $36 billion in 2022, which is about $19,000 per year per U.S. farm), which makes it the largest single export market for U.S. agricultural goods.
China buying our agricultural land is also not a serious concern.
Most foreign owned farm land (more than 70%) is owned by Canadians or Western Europeans. Foreigners from all places own about 3.1% of U.S. agricultural land, and foreigners with Chinese connections own about 0.9% of that, i.e. less than 0.03% of U.S. agricultural land (about 383,935 acres), which is about 827 average sized farms out of 1,890,000 farms in the U.S., and not all in one place either. And, particularly near the Canadian border (e.g., in Maine and the UP) most foreign owners are Canadians.
The main legitimate concern about Chinese agents purchasing U.S. agricultural land is that the land might be close to U.S. military bases that could be used to spy on those bases. But the Biden administration addressed that issue:
A 2022 Chinese land purchase in the U.S. . . . raised concerns. That spring, a food producer called Fufeng Group bought 370 acres for corn milling near an Air Force base in North Dakota. This prompted the Biden administration to propose a new rule: any foreign company or individual who wants to buy land within 100 miles of certain U.S. military bases (the North Dakota base included) needs government approval.
No comments:
Post a Comment