Citing a new state law against foreign ownership of land in Arkansas, state Attorney General Tim Griffin ordered Syngenta, one of the world’s largest seed companies, on Tuesday to sell 160 acres of farmland in northeastern Arkansas within two years. Gov. Sarah Sanders said Arkansas was the first state to take such action.
The rise in Sino-U.S. tensions has sparked proposals at the state and federal level to block “adversaries” such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea from acquiring agricultural land and agricultural companies in the United States. The Senate voted in July for such a prohibition against those four countries.
Syngenta is owned by ChemChina, a state-owned enterprise.
“I am ordering ChemChina, as a ‘prohibited foreign-party-controlled business,’ to divest this land within two years or I will commence an enforcement action in Craighead County circuit court,” said Griffin. The 2023 state law, Act 636, allows judicial foreclosure and sale of land owned by proscribed foreign entities.
Griffin also fined Syngenta $280,000 — a quarter of the value of its farmland — for missing a deadline to report on ownership of the land.
Sanders said Syngenta’s owership of the land “is a clear threat to our national security, and it’s a clear threat to our state,” the Arkansas news site Talk Business and Politics reported. The land in northeastern Arkansas is used to develop and test seed technologies. “Seeds are technology,” said the governor, and can be used to steal intellectual property.
About 40 million acres, or 3 percent, of the 1.3 billion acres of private agricultural land in the United States are owned by foreigners. One third of that land is owned by Canadians, followed by Europeans. Chinese entities own roughly 384,000 acres, most of it in the hands of Smithfield Foods and billionaire Sun Guangxin.
A 1987 law requires foreign investors to report purchases of agricultural land. The USDA gathers information from 3,000 counties, 50 states, and 500 tribes. There is no uniform reporting system, said a USDA official in September. Congress has given the USDA until 2026 to create a digital filing system and a searchable database of foreign holdings, although it has provided no additional funding for the work.