China has admitted it is helping Russia fight its war against Ukraine to distract the United States from countering the Chinese Communist Party elsewhere in the world. This makes it more important than ever to ensure that our critical infrastructure is resilient and can counter Chinese malfeasance.
No infrastructure is more critical to America’s survival than its ability to feed its citizens. This past week, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, addressed this security risk by launching the first-ever National Farm Security Action Plan.
This seven-point plan would increase fines for violating the Agriculture Foreign Investment Disclosure Act, create an online portal for farmers and ranchers to report non-compliance with the AFIDA, work with states to ban the purchase of American farmland by “countries of concern,” such as China and Iran, require research grant recipients to certify they are not owned or controlled by foreign adversaries, and work with state governments to strengthen protections against biosecurity threats.
“American agriculture is not just about feeding our families,” Rollins told reporters, “but about protecting 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.”
Hegseth added, “No longer can foreign adversaries assume we aren’t watching. As someone who’s charged with leading the Defense Department, I want to know who owns the land around our bases and strategic bases, and getting an understanding of why foreign entities, foreign companies, foreign individuals might be buying up land around those bases.”
In 2023, a year after local officials blocked the sale of a 370-acre corn milling facility near the Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, the Senate voted 91-7 to block all Chinese businesses from purchasing American farmland. Unfortunately, that legislation did not get a vote in the House. Congress should return to the bill and pass it.
Six states — Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Oklahoma — ban foreign ownership of farmland, and another 20 limit foreign investment. Some bans are too broad, as Canada is the biggest foreign holder of American farmland and does not pose a national security threat. The same is not true of China or corporations controlled by China, and every effort should be made to ban purchases of American farmland by Chinese-linked companies and force those companies to divest any land they own.
Just last month, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan and her boyfriend, both Chinese nationals, were arrested and charged with smuggling goods into the country, including a biological pathogen, Fusarium graminearum, that could wipe out entire fields of wheat, barley, and rice.
“We have already canceled seven active agreements with entities in foreign countries of concern and will continue to cancel additional agreements,” Rollins said. “I signed a memo today, which immediately removes 70 citizens from countries of concern that are currently affiliated with the USDA through contracts or research arrangements. And we are working to issue regulatory action to remove over 550 entities from foreign countries of concern from our preferred catalog.”
CHINA’S CYNICISM ON UKRAINE EXPOSED
It is concerning that the steps the Trump administration is taking to protect agricultural infrastructure were not taken years ago. The CCP has a record of trying to undermine our national security in every way, including hacking into local utility providers and attacking the electrical grid. There is no reason why it would not also try to destroy America’s ability to feed itself.
China is by far the gravest threat to national security, and measures such as President Donald Trump’s National Farm Security Action Plan are long overdue.