The Agriculture Department and the FDA would become members of a powerful U.S. committee that rules on the national security implications of foreign ownership of U.S. assets under a bipartisan Senate bill unveiled on Tuesday. The legislation would also empower the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), led by the Treasury, to consider retroactive divestment of real estate owned by foreign entities.
Sponsors Debbie Stabenow, chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, said their bill would strengthen U.S. oversight of foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land. Two House committees voted last week to block or heavily tax farmland purchases by foreign adversaries such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.
Foreign entities own 40.8 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, or 3.1 percent of the privately owned land in the nation, according to USDA data. Half of the foreign-owned land is forests. Canada accounts for one third of the foreign-owned land. Lawmakers often worry about purchases by China, which owned 347,000 acres at latest count.
“This bill safeguards our nation’s farmland and food supply by overhauling the system for federal oversight of foreign land ownership,” said Stabenow. Ernst said the legislation would “combat our foreign adversaries, especially the Chinese Communist Party’s malign actions in our own backyard.”
Under the bill, the USDA and the FDA would become members of CFIUS, now limited to seven federal departments and the White House, and CFIUS’s powers would be expanded to better consider agricultural needs when it decides if a purchase would create national security risks. It also would require CFIUS to consider retroactive divestment of real estate and require it to review all agricultural land purchases in the past three years that exceeded 320 acres or $5 million.