Foreign investors own about 43.4 million acres of land
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
The number of acres of U.S. agricultural land foreign investors own is up by 3.4 million acres.
That’s according to a new USDA report, Foreign Holdings of U.S. Agricultural Land, which tracked foreign investment of U.S. forest land and farmland between December 2021 and 2022.
As of December 2022, foreign investors “held an interest in over 43.4 million acres,” the report’s summary says. In 2021 foreign investors owned about 40 million acres of land.
To put that number into context, South Dakota had about 43.7 million acres of farmland in 2022.
And since 2017, foreign farmland ownership has increased by about 2.9 million acres each year.
Cropland accounts for about 28.3 percent of the foreign ownership. Another 21.3 percent is considered “foreign-held pasture and other agricultural land.”
Investors from north of the border own the most land.
Canadian investors own about 14.2 million acres of land, or roughly the same number of farmland acres in South Carolina.
China’s involvement in foreign U.S. farmland ownership “should be interpreted as a minimum,” the report says.
China’s share of U.S. farmland in 2022 totaled about 349,442 acres, or less than 1 percent of total foreign-held acres.
For context, Rhode Island had fewer than 300,000 acres of farmland in 2022.
The state with the highest percentage of foreign-held farmland is Maine.
Of its 16,558,084 acres of privately held agricultural land, 3,489,957 acres, or about 21 percent, are held by foreign entities.
Multiple state governments acted in 2022 to reduce foreign U.S. farmland ownership.
In Arkansas, for example, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed Act 636 into law, which prohibits foreign parties from nine countries from owning agricultural land in the state.
As a result of this law, Northrup King Seed Co., a subsidiary of Syngenta Seeds, whose parent company is ChemChina, must sell 160 acres of land within two years.
And in Ohio, the Save Our Farmland and Protect Our National Security Act, prevents anyone listed on a registry compiled by the Secretary of State from owning farmland.
The list includes people with ties to the governments of China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia or Venezuelan politician Nicolás Maduro from purchasing farmland in the state.