Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-IA) has made opposing the Chinese acquisition of American farmland a cornerstone of his congressional career and has highlighted this position during his ongoing run for Iowa governor. However, campaign finance records show Feenstra was accepting contributions from political action committees controlled by Chinese companies that have purchased swaths of farmland in the United States.
Federal Election Commission records show that, between 2020 and 2024, committees belonging to Syngenta and Smithfield Foods wired over $20,000 to Feenstra’s congressional campaign. Both Syngenta and Smithfield Foods have strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party and collectively control tens of thousands of acres of farmland across the U.S..
Syngenta was acquired in 2017 by the China National Chemical Corporation, a Chinese state-owned enterprise, and later folded into SinoChem, another firm owned by the Chinese government. Smithfield Foods, for its part, was purchased in 2013 by the Hong Kong-based WH Group, a firm whose top executives are CCP members with extensive ties to the Chinese government.
“In Congress, I led the charge to ban China from buying American farmland,” Feenstra wrote on X in October 2025. “We cannot let China buy up our land, especially near sensitive military bases. As Governor, I will keep China out of rural Iowa and away from our farms.”
Feenstra has indeed taken many actions during his tenure on Capitol Hill to curb foreign acquisitions of American farmland.
On March 30, 2023, for instance, the congressman sponsored an amendment to the Lower Energy Costs Act that would bar “China from buying American farmland suitable for ethanol and biodiesel production.” Just weeks later, he accepted a $5,000 donation from Syngenta’s PAC, campaign finance records show.
About a year later, in February 2024, Feenstra penned an op-ed in a local publication arguing that there is an “urgent need to defend our farmland from our foreign adversaries” in order to “keep China at bay.” Two weeks earlier, the FEC records show he accepted another $5,000 from Syngenta.
Syngenta’s PAC boasts of being “on the front lines advocating policy outcomes that will favorably impact individuals in the [agriculture] industry,” funding members of Congress who “promote the ag industry’s Freedom to Operate.”
Most recently, Feenstra introduced a bill in March 2025 that would authorize the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to review large acquisitions of American farmland made by foreign entities, a move he said would “protect our farms and agricultural production from our foreign adversaries, especially China.”
Since launching his gubernatorial campaign, Feenstra has posted multiple times on social media about his efforts to curb Chinese purchases of U.S. farmland.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that Smithfield Foods owned 97,975 acres of U.S. farmland as of 2022, whereas Syngenta controls fewer than 1,000 acres, a number that has been dwindling following pressure from Republican public officials.
While Syngenta’s American farmland holdings are relatively modest, being primarily used for research and development, a significant portion of them are right in Feenstra’s backyard. Boone County, Iowa, which is in Feenstra’s congressional district, is home to more than 200 acres of agricultural land and roughly 70 acres of industrial land owned by the Chinese firm, county records show.
Pork produced by Smithfield Foods reportedly made its way to Shuanghui Investment and Development Co., a Chinese company that operates a food stockpile center for China’s armed forces. The Trump administration, meanwhile, accused SinoChem, Syngenta’s owner, of being backed by the Chinese military in 2020.
Feenstra isn’t alone in taking campaign contributions from Syngenta and Smithfield Foods. The duo of Chinese-owned companies showers members of Congress with hundreds of thousands of dollars every election cycle, seemingly focusing their efforts on members who represent areas with strong agricultural economies. Campaign finance records show that Feenstra is using his congressional war chest to bankroll his gubernatorial campaign.
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Corporate PACs are typically funded by employee donations, while decisions on how to distribute campaign checks are made by company leadership.
Feenstra’s office referred the Washington Examiner to the congressman’s gubernatorial campaign, which did not respond to a request for comment.