(NewsInsights.org) – The Government Accountability Office (GAO), a watchdog agency tasked with overseeing the functionality of government agencies, concluded an investigation of the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) data collection and reporting procedures regarding foreign investments in US farming, grazing, and forest lands. The GAO issued a report on Thursday, January 18, slamming Biden’s USDA for failures to report foreign investments in US lands, including by Chinese individuals and corporations, with adequate detail and in a timely fashion. The GAO reasoned the gaps in reporting leave the nation’s security at risk.
Congress asked the GAO to investigate after reports surfaced that Chinese corporations and individuals had purchased agricultural land near sensitive military facilities, prompting security concerns. Additionally, Congress members raised questions about the volume of land bought by foreign investors and their intentions.
Under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) of 1978, the USDA collects data on lands purchased by foreign investors, who self-report, and transmits the collated information to Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) agencies. Those agencies include the Departments of Defense and Treasury, among others.
Currently, the USDA collects the data entirely through paper forms from field offices and regional headquarters. The GAO found the reporting processes “unclear and challenging to implement.” The outdated complexity of the system has resulted in the agency reporting AFIDA data to CFIUS only once per year and with too little data to help the DOD track security concerns. While Congress is requiring the USDA to update to a real-time online reporting system, the agency said it hadn’t received a budget to implement the demand.
As of 2021, foreign interests owned approximately 40 million acres of US agricultural lands, representing about 3% of the total, according to figures obtained from the USDA by NPR. Canadian investors, holding nearly 12.9 million acres collectively, represented the largest bloc of foreign agricultural landholders, followed by Dutch investors with 4.9 million acres.
Chinese investors came in 18th on the list with slightly less than 400,000 acres or 0.03% of US agricultural lands. A single investor, Sun Guangxin, a billionaire, owns more than 100,000 acres in Val Verde County, Texas, where he wanted to build wind farms. However, state regulations prevented him from accessing the power grid because his company originates outside the US. Smithfield Foods, a Chinese-owned corporation, owns almost 150,000 acres in North Carolina to support its hog-farming operation.
The GAO made six executive action recommendations for Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. However, the bottom line was that reporting needs to happen more often, and the USDA needs to coordinate with the Defense Department regarding purchase locations because sensitive sites are rarely made public.
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