Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is causing global hunger and galloping food prices, and future supply-chain disruptions will bring more such misery. Many countries are realizing that they should grow more food, but they’ve sold much of their best land to China, which uses it to feed its own population. A few years ago, China bought nearly one-tenth of Ukraine’s arable farmland.
Over the past few years, Chinese buyers have bought farmland in countries ranging from the U.S. and France to Vietnam. In 2013 Hong Kong-based food giant
bought Smithfield, America’s largest pork producer, and more than 146,000 acres of Missouri farmland. In the same year, Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps bought 9% of Ukraine’s famously fertile farmland, equal to 5% of the country’s total territory, with a 50-year lease. (In 2020, the U.S. imposed sanctions on the Chinese company over human-rights abuses.) Between 2011 and 2020, China bought nearly seven million hectares of farmland around the world. Firms from the U.K. bought nearly two million hectares, while U.S. and Japanese firms bought less than a million hectares.
A bill sponsored by Rep. Dan Newhouse (R., Wash.), currently before the House Appropriations Committee, proposes to ban Chinese, Russian, Iranian and North Korean companies from buying American farmland. It follows a bill introduced in 2020 by Republican Sens. Jim Inhofe and Thom Tillis, which would require screening of farmland acquisitions by foreign entities.
Such scrutiny should be accompanied by efforts to buy land back from China and any other strategic rivals. Allowing hostile powers to own farmland has become too risky. Demand for arable land will grow as the climate changes. At the same time, geopolitical confrontation will cause more disrupted food-supply chains. Every hectare counts.
