(CNSNews.com) - China owns "less than 1 percent of 1 percent" of American agricultural land, or roughly 383,000 acres, but there is no reliable system for tracking those Chinese purchases, Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack told Congress on Tuesday.
"Right now, we are reliant on people basically self-reporting (foreign and Chinese land purchases)," Vilsack told the House Agriculture Committee.
"There is no mechanism for us to collect from 3,000 county organizations that record deeds every single day. So I think if you want to focus on this, you need to focus on it, some kind of system that will allow us information," he said.
Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.) said he's particularly concerned about Chinese-owned land near Whiteman Air Force Base, "home of the B-2 Stealth bomber," in his district.
"I agree with you, Congressman, that we have to be very, very careful about the ownership of foreign land near any of our defense installations, which is why a recent situation in North Dakota was brought to everyone's attention," Vilsack said. "I agree with you on that."
Alford asked Vilsack if he'd be in favor of a disclosure requirement that would let USDA know "exactly where they money is coming from to buy farmland in America."
Vilsack said that thousands of county officials who record land deeds are "supposed to report to us," as required by the Agriculture Foreign Investment Disclosure Act, but USDA lacks the "investigative power" to check if that's actually happening.
"The more information we have, the better job we can do of implementing the law that's on the books. Right now, we don't get the information that we need to fully completely comply with that," Vilsack said.
Vilsack said "some kind of clearinghouse" would make it easier for USDA to know "precisely what's happening on a day-to-day basis," and he said he would be willing to work with the committee on establishing such a system.
"The Chinese communist government is the number one threat to America right now," Alford said. "And we've got to do something before they buy up farmland and they start firing missiles at our stealth bombers. It's got to stop."
Later in the hearing, Vilsack said USDA has "doubled the number of people focused on implementation of the current law.
"But...here's the challenge. The challenge is, we do not have any investigative power...We have essentially the ability to penalize -- to assess penalties, but we don't have the capacity to investigate.
"You're looking at 3,000 -- more than 3,000 counties in this country. Every single county has a recorder's office. Every single recorder's office receives deeds. There isn't a process now for there to be an accumulation of the deeds that are -- that are being filed today in those recorder's offices. It is dependent on people making the report to us voluntarily.
"So it's a system where there's a gap in terms of our ability to know what transactions are taking place."
Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) has introduced a bill to "stop foreign purchases of farmland" until a system is in place to enforce disclosure of those purchases.