Who’s Buying The Land Near Military Bases? State of Play
China owns about 277,000 acres of American farmland. The reason it still matters has nothing to do with the acreage and everything to do with the address.
Start with the number that deflates the panic. Chinese investors hold roughly 277,336 acres of U.S. agricultural land, which is two-hundredths of one percent of all American farmland. If foreign ownership were a stock, China would be a micro-cap position you could barely find in the index. So why care?
Because risk is not judged by size alone. It is judged by concentration and location. One acre next to a fenceline is farmland. One acre next to a runway where the Air Force flies its most sensitive aircraft is a listening post with a soybean cover story. The map matters more than the total.
The backstory
Washington has known about this for years and has mostly filed paperwork about it. The Agriculture Department tracks foreign holdings through a disclosure law with famously soft enforcement. When buyers assembled land near a major California air base, local officials told reporters, in plain terms, that they had no idea who was behind it. Chinese holdings actually fell 27 percent from a 2021 peak of about 384,000 acres, partly as renewable-energy projects were reclassified. The trend line is down. But the disclosure law was written to count acres, not to screen buyers, so it produces a tidy annual report and almost no security review.
The receipts
- 277,336 acres. China’s share of U.S. farmland as of 2023.
- 85 million acres. Total foreign-held U.S. agricultural land, per Congress’s own researchers.
- Down 27 percent. Chinese acreage fell from a 2021 peak near 384,000 acres.
- ‘We have no idea.’ What officials near a major California air base said about who was quietly buying the surrounding parcels.
- Proximity, not paranoia. The bill screens deals near bases, ports, and critical sites, not every foreign purchase of a cornfield.
- Stuck since spring. A bill to block adversary purchases near bases has sat in three House committees with no floor vote.
In their own words
Rep. John Moolenaar, whose bipartisan bill would presumptively block such deals and add Agriculture to national-security reviews: “Food security is national security, and we cannot allow foreign adversaries like China to buy up American farmland near our most sensitive military and critical infrastructure sites.”
On the ground
While the federal bill idles, the states are not waiting. A South Carolina House panel advanced its own measure barring foreign adversaries from buying farmland, and it is one of a growing list of legislatures writing rules Washington has not. That is federalism doing its job, but it also produces a patchwork: fifty different definitions of who counts as an adversary and how close is too close to a base.
A national security problem handled fifty different ways is not really handled. It is deferred, with paperwork. The Pentagon does not defend a coastline county by county, and a foreign-ownership screen full of state-line seams is an invitation to shop for the weakest one.
Where things stand
The fix is neither complicated nor partisan. The measure is bipartisan; it targets proximity rather than nationality-blind bans, and it shifts the burden onto the buyer to prove a deal next to a base is not a threat. It has been ready since May 7. The acreage is small. A country that cannot say who owns the ground outside its own runways has stopped doing the easy part of national security. Voters should expect at least that much of the people they hire to guard the perimeter.
-The Editors
