Heightened U.S.-China economic and geopolitical tensions have produced numerous congressional proposals to forcibly decouple the two economies, ostensibly on national security grounds. Several such proposals would severely restrict or even ban Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland, due to the aforementioned tensions and the fact that farmland purchases by Chinese nationals or companies have increased in recent years.

Surely, foreign governments’ or government-controlled entities’ purchases of certain U.S. land (e.g., near sensitive military installations) can raise legitimate national security concerns that might warrant federal oversight or intervention. Fortunately, there’s little current indication that foreign farmland purchases – even by Chinese entities – justify the type of broad-based government restrictions that some in Congress are contemplating.

For starters, recent increases in foreign and Chinese ownership need to be put into proper perspective. While the amount of U.S. agricultural land owned by foreigners doubled between 2009–2019, the latest federal government data (for 2021) show that these parcels still account for just 3.1 percent of all private farmland in the United States (see Figure 1). The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines foreign ownership as both land owned solely by foreigners, as well as land jointly owned by American and foreign investors.

Of this sliver of private U.S. agricultural land, moreover, Chinese entities remain a tiny player. As Figure 2 shows, in fact, Chinese entities own less than 1 percent of all foreign-owned farmland, while most of the land is owned by companies and individuals located in nations closely allied with the United States, such as Canada (30 percent), the Netherlands (12 percent), Italy (6 percent), the U.K. (6 percent), and Germany (6 percent). Including Hong Kong in China’s totals doesn’t much change these results – it’s still just 1.2 percent of all foreign-owned farmland. As Tori Smith of the American Action Forum notes, China ranks tenth among foreign nations in the value of their U.S. farmland, behind Japan and Sweden, and well behind Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany.

Overall, these totals mean that China or China and Hong Kong combined accounted for a trivial 0.03 or 0.04 percent, respectively, of all private U.S. agricultural land in 2021 (see Figure 3). To put that into perspective: If all private U.S. agricultural land were a gallon of milk, Chinese holdings would fill a whopping… quarter of a teaspoon.

This does not scream “national security crisis.”

Furthermore, there are several reasons why even these paltry totals likely overstate the threat posed by Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland. First, as Cato adjunct scholar Dan Griswold points out in a forthcoming op-ed, most of the “Chinese” land at issue is “other agricultural” land, not actual cropland or forest, and most of this “other” land is owned by a Hong Kong-based private company following the 2013 acquisition of U.S. pork producer Smithfield. While controversial at the time, the acquisition was reviewed and approved by the U.S. government’s inbound investment-screening body, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), and has raised no serious land-related concerns in the last decade.

Second, it’s not entirely clear why Chinese holdings of U.S. farmland are, in general, problematic. Most obviously, the Chinese government cannot steal the land, and the U.S. government could (and probably would) expropriate it in times of war or other national emergencies. Furthermore, absent an exponential (and wholly unrealistic) increase in Chinese land holdings, there would remain hundreds of millions of acres of U.S. land – farmland or otherwise – not under Chinese control. This includes 640 million acres of land owned by the federal government, millions of which are already used by American ranchers for cattle grazing. Indeed, thanks to scientific and technological innovations that have tripled agricultural productivity (meaning we produce much more food on the same amount of land) since 1948, Americans’ own farmland needs continue to decline.

All this being said, specific foreign land holdings could raise national security concerns, and there is some possible room for improvement in this regard. In particular, data on foreign-owned farmland near high-security sites, such as military installations, could be improved. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted in 2021, for example, the only federal law regarding data on foreign agricultural holdings is the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA), which relies on self-reported data from foreign entities. Additionally, AFIDA-reported data is not checked by USDA for accuracy, and the agency rarely penalizes companies for failing to report data. Others have reported on similar shortcomings with the current farmland data.

Also, U.S. investment screening rules could be updated to ensure that CFIUS can review foreign farmland purchases near military installations. For example, Chinese agriculture company Fufeng recently purchased land 15 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base, even though the Air Force wrote that it viewed the acquisition as a national security threat. CFIUS, however, concluded it didn’t have jurisdiction over the purchase. (Ultimately, the Grand Forks, N.D. city government stopped the corn mill proposed at the site, although Fufeng still owns the land.)

Given these two issues, it may be appropriate for Congress to improve government data on foreign-owned farmland and to ensure that real national security issues can be remedied. Some legislation, such as the FARM Act, the Protecting Military Installations and Ranges Act, and the SOIL Act, have proposed reforms in this regard, though each could be improved in certain other respects. Given the legal, economic, and practical concerns raised by the federal government broadly restricting private land transactions (ones usually involving American citizens), such actions shouldn’t be considered until more narrowly-targeted measures are implemented, data enhancements and other improvements are made, and additional problems are revealed. In the meantime, however, there’s little reason for serious concern about the vast majority of foreign farmland holdings, including the quarter-teaspoon held by China.