To feed its 1.3 billion citizens, China is amassing large tracts of agricultural land in Australia, replacing the United States as the second-largest foreign owner of farmland in the country. (The United Kingdom is the largest foreign owner.)
“In the past year alone, Chinese investment in Australia’s overall agricultural sector has skyrocketed threefold, from $300 million to $1 billion—an unprecedented investment boom,” says NPR.
In 2015, a private Chinese company offered to buy up the giant Kidman cattle ranch, which is the size of South Carolina and makes up 2 percent of Australia’s total farmland. The offer was rejected on the grounds that it wouldn’t be good for national interests, but some experts think that China will simply start to bundle smaller farms in order to turn them into larger corporate operations.