Foreign Ag Land Ownership Is Up, China's Is Down

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 08/06/2025) (BOSTON) – While foreign investment in U.S. agricultural land has increased in the last 15 to 20 years, China’s share of that has decreased since 2021 from 383,000 acres to 277,000 acres in 2023, said Danny Munch of the American Farm Bureau Federation.

At the National Conference of State Legislatures, Munch reviewed the share of ag land that is owned by foreign nations and said China owns only about 0.2% of the foreign-owned ag land in America.

Sixty-two percent of foreign ag land is owned by Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Germany, Munch said, with almost half of all ag land being forest.

Munch said the reason European countries are largely eyeing property ownership, leasing or use in the U.S. is because they have nowhere else to expand to for renewable energy, like solar or wind, and they need to buy cheap land to keep pace with demand.

He did point to areas like the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where 1.19 million acres are owned by foreign countries.

Harrison Pittman, director of the National Agricultural Law Center, said the number of state legislatures proposing policies to regulate or restrict foreign ownership of ag land has increased in the last two years, but the problem with this is developing political consensus on the front end of the bills’ development and then keeping it as the bills move through committees and the chambers.

Pittman also said there’s been an increase in policies proposed that target or restrict foreign adversaries from owning land.

Munch said it’s important to remember that some of the foreign ag land accounted for in his data is migrant farmers who aren’t citizens but have farms here.

Indiana state Sen. Eric Koch, moderating the session, asked the pair what they think about the strategic nature of foreign land purchases, especially from nations deemed adversarial, when those purchases are near military bases or other critical infrastructure.

Koch asked what considerations legislators need to include when they’re drafting legislation to regulate, block or restrict these purchases.

Pittman said states are increasingly placing geographic restrictions around military installations.

Munch said any country that buys ag land in the U.S. is self-interested, but some of those interests are to gain cheap land to benefit their energy grid, and others might have adversarial intentions.