re: Chinese buy 300 acres of ND farmland for about $3 million

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Land grabbing—when a government, company, or other entity purchases large swathes of land in another country—can affect local land rights and agricultural production, sometimes putting local food security at risk. While such purchases in low- and middle-income countries have been covered extensively, they also happen here in the United States. Foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land doubled from 2009 to 2019, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) records, and policymakers have become increasingly concerned about foreign control of the U.S. food supply.

Q1: Where and why are foreign entities purchasing farmland in the United States?

A1: USDA records provide the best source of information on foreign-held agricultural land, although they are still incomplete and contain many errors (as explained in A3 below). According to USDA data, foreign investors owned at least 35.2 million acres of U.S. agricultural land in 2019—2.7 percent of U.S. farmland, an area almost the size of Iowa. While foreign land ownership has been reported in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, the holdings are concentrated in particular states. The greatest share is in Texas, with over 4.4 million acres, followed by Maine (3.3 million acres) and Alabama (1.8 million acres). Over 40 percent of the additional 3.4 million acres acquired by foreign investors in 2019 was located in Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado.

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