Add fuel to the fire of foreign land ownership

Add fuel to the fire of foreign land ownership

With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I’m Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.

It’s a hot topic across the country, with some states passing similar but different laws, others skipping the issue, and still others pushing the federal government to do more.

The issue? Foreign ownership of U.S. land. And since this story is a recurring theme here in the Southeast, I noticed it upstream on the Mississippi.

A Chinese company recently bought a grain terminal in St. Louis right on the Mississippi. Dennis Wilmsmeyer, managing director of America’s Central Port in Illinois, has questions about the transaction…

“When I hear that the Chinese and others are buying up farmland, it obviously concerns us. While it’s not a direct problem for what we do on a daily basis, we hear that river terminal facilities are also being bought by foreign owners. That’s a big problem, if only because you hear the term ‘bad actors.’ We’re very concerned about that. What are they planning to do? Why are they investing in our facilities here in this country? And if we lose control, how do we get them back?”

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent report on foreign interest in U.S. agricultural land, foreigners owned interests in over 43.4 million acres of U.S. agricultural land as of December 31, 2022. This represents 3.4 percent of all privately owned agricultural land and nearly 2 percent of the total land area in the United States.