Put Another Log on the Foreign Ag Land Ownership Fire

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

It is a touchy topic throughout the nation with some states passing similar, but different laws, others leaving the topic alone, and some pushing on the federal government to do more.

The topic? Foreign ownership of U.S. land. And, as it sprinkles into conversation here in the Southeast, this story caught my eye from upstream on the Mississippi.

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

“When I hear the Chinese and other are buying up farmland, that obviously has a concern to us. It’s not a direct concern for what we do on a daily basis, but we do hear of river terminal facilities also being purchased by foreign ownership. That is a major concern just because, you hear of the term ‘bad actors.’ We are very concerned in that respect. What’s their intention? Why are they investing in our facilities here in this country? And, once we lose control, how do we get that back?”

From the latest USDA Foreign Holdings of U.S. Agricultural Land report, foreign persons held an interest in over 43.4 million acres of U.S. agricultural land as of December 31, 2022. This is 3.4 percent of all privately held agricultural land and nearly 2 percent of all land in the United States.