A bipartisan group of senators is raising warnings about a growing issue in America’s central regions: foreign ownership of farmland, with China being a major player.

Their concern is fueled by a significant surge: Chinese investments in U.S. agriculture have increased tenfold in just ten years, as noted by Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, who has proposed the ‘Farmland Act.’

This proposed law aims to curb Chinese control over U.S. land by increasing federal oversight of agricultural properties owned by foreign entities.

It’s an effort with one overarching goal in mind: Curtail the creeping ambitions of one of our top adversaries.

Ernst explicitly calls out China, which ‘in particular has increased agricultural investments tenfold over the past decade.’

Ernst told the Daily Mail that ‘limiting the opportunities for foreign entities, especially adversaries like China’ to purchase farmland is critically important. 

China ‘will come in and purchase that land, so that we’re not able to put it into production, and in turn they are,’ Ernst noted.

There is bipartisan consensus that China is a threat to the United States in areas such as intellectual property and global competitiveness, but Democrats and Republicans typically disagree on the best ways to deal with the adversarial nation. 

Republicans are raising concerns about insufficient oversight in government programs that fund research and technological innovation, particularly when foreign nationals are leading projects financed by U.S. taxpayers.

Democrats, on the other hand, are blaming the Trump administration for cutting funding to research initiatives they say are critical to maintaining America’s competitiveness in emerging technologies.

Despite the disagreements, Ernst has been able to draft two Democrats to support the bill: Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania.  Republicans Rick Scott of Florida and Ted Budd of North Carolina have also signed on, giving it wide geographical support. 

Opposition to the Farmland Act centers on concerns about expanded federal oversight and regulatory burdens for foreign investors in acquiring U.S. agricultural property. Legitimate investments could see their transactions disrupted or delayed, these critics argue.

Still, many states have already taken steps to limit foreign purchases of their land, including Ernst’s Iowa. 

‘But, if you go back and look across the United States at what we already have sold to foreign entities, if you put all those acres together, its going to be larger than the state of Tennessee,’ Ernst told the Daily Mail.

In Budd’s state of North Carolina, China owns nearly 50,000 acres of farmland, some of it near critical sites such as us military bases.

Scott’s home state of Florida is home to nearly 13,000 acres of farmland owned by China.

Ernst’s bill isn’t the only one in the works that aims to stop China’s efforts to buy up American agricultural land. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley has introduced the Protecting Our Farms and Homes from China Act, and Representative Mary Miller introduced a House compliment to his bill this week. Twelve Republican members have co-sponsored Miller’s bill in the House.   

The Trump administration claimed back in February that overall, China owns over 350,000 acres in 27 states. Foreign entities and individuals own roughly 43 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, nearly 2 percent of all U.S. land, according to government data.

A Government Accountability Office report from 2024 determined that foreign acquisitions of U.S. land are difficult to identify. It also determined that a prior report from 2021 – claiming that foreign entities owned 40 million acres – was inaccurate. 

Trump’s Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced recently that the Department of Agriculture (USDA) would not allow ‘Chinese nationals’ or other foreign adversaries to purchase farmland in the United States.

‘American agriculture is not just about feeding our families but about protecting our nation and standing up to foreign adversaries who are buying our farmland, stealing our research and creating dangerous vulnerabilities in the very systems that sustain us,’ Rollins said.