Brooke Rollins, the new head of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), told Breitbart News last week that one of her top priorities in her new role is something many of us have been hoping for for a long time: stopping China from buying U.S. farmland.
"One of the very, very top of the list perhaps is the Chinese purchase of our farmland. A lot of that land is around some of our military outposts," she said.
Back in January, I wrote about how, as of 2023, the USDA reported that "46 million acres of crop, pasture, and forest lands were held by investors from outside of the United States." That's 3.6% of all public land in the U.S. While Chinese land ownership actually declined a bit in 2023, investments from countries like Canada, Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom were on the rise. Canadians currently own more U.S. land than any other foreigners.
Related: Guess Who Is Buying Up U.S. Farmland Now?
Several states have already been working toward or have passed laws that impose restrictions or outright bans. According to data gathered by Voice of America, "As of mid-December of last year, 215 bills restricting property ownership by foreign entities have been introduced across 40 states, of which 164 prohibit or otherwise restrict Chinese citizens from purchasing or owning some form of property."
Rollins, who was the head of the America First Policy Institute before her confirmation as the secretary of agriculture earlier this month, pointed out that she's a huge believer in the 10th Amendment and the "laboratories of democracy." And while she's helped many of those states in the past, it's time to look at a potential federal ban.
Rollins also praised Donald Trump for opening the world's eyes to the threat of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP):
If we’re looking back in history nine or 10 years ago, when he first came down that escalator in New York City and started talking about China as a massive threat not just to our national security but to everything—to our food security, to everything—and I remember as I’m a longtime Reagan conservative, a leader on policy in Texas for all those years before I met President Trump, people weren’t really talking about China. Not many people, at least, in that way. President Trump brought an entirely new context to the conversation on what we need to do to put America First. In fact, China may not be the really good player that a lot of the free market believers had suggested they were, so to answer your question directly I think a wholesale across-the-board very deep look at where China’s influence is, especially in the last decade, which is very concerning, is extremely important.
During the Breitbart interview, Rollins also said that she was really looking forward to working with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "to empower Americans to live longer and healthier and more abundant lives," even though she admits that there may be some disagreement about what that looks like.
But ultimately, she will do what it takes to support Trump's vision. That includes doing her part to help battle inflation and lower food prices, which she says is "not going to happen overnight" because of how bad Joe Biden's policies were. "This is years of arguably ineffective decision-making and not completely addressing the problem. There is a good chance we begin to cool this down over the coming weeks, more likely the coming months, and we’re already in talks with other food producers across the country, but I think it’s important everyone realize there is not a magic wand to be waved here. But there are some things we can do to begin tackling it not just for the next quarter of this year but for the next 10 years and 50 years to ensure this doesn’t happen again," she said.