July 9, 2025 – Republican governors, members of Congress, and three other cabinet members joined Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins yesterday to announce a Trump administration plan to crack down on Chinese ownership of farmland and confront what they described as other imminent threats to American agriculture.
At the event, Rollins unveiled a National Farm Security Action Plan that lays out actions to work with the Border Patrol to prevent plant and animal pathogens from entering the country and review all U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs to ensure they comply with President Trump’s “America First” mandate, among other steps.
But at the top of the list—in the plan and at the event—was a focus on foreign entities owning farmland. More specifically, Rollins pointed to Chinese companies owning farmland near military bases.
“If you look at the gradations of threat, that’s the most obvious,” said Peter Navarro, the White House trade advisor who has also been a driving force behind Trump’s tariffs. “What Secretary Rollins is doing today, it’s a historic day. She’s putting down the marker that the United States is no longer going to tolerate attacks on our agricultural system, not just the land, but the supply chain as well.”
Foreign farmland ownership has become a hot-button issue in Washington, D.C. and states around the country over the last several years, with Republicans zeroing in especially on China. Less than 4 percent of American farmland is owned by foreign entities, but the acreage has been increasing in recent years. Entities in Canada, the Netherlands, and Italy own the bulk of the land. Chinese companies own about 265,000 acres, or .02 percent. Pork giant Smithfield, owned by the Chinese firm WH Group, is responsible for most of that, although the company has been selling off some of its land, according to The Washington Post.
Navarro mentioned both Smithfield and the other large agricultural company owned by a Chinese entity: Syngenta, one of the four largest seed and chemical companies in the world.
Last year, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report on foreign farmland ownership in which it found the USDA’s processes “to collect, track, and report key information are flawed” and recommended several actions to correct them. Some of the actions have already been completed, while others are included in the new farm security plan.
But at the event, Rollins hinted at a more definitive path toward banning foreign ownership and “clawing back” land that’s already in the hands of foreign companies. “We are looking at every available option,” she said. “You’ll likely see an executive order on this very soon from the White House, and we’ll be looking at multiple different authorities.”
Some states have already passed laws, and members of Congress, including Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), have also proposed legislation.
“To me the Chinese owning land is just a small, small piece of the puzzle,” Marshall said at the event. “I’m much more concerned about the food supply down the road here, that right now foreign entities own about a fifth of the protein processing. Between beef and pork, JBS and Smithfield own about a fifth, maybe even a fourth of the protein processing in this entire country. That’s just wrong.” (JBS is Brazilian-owned.)
Rollins was also asked about the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown threatening farmers’ ability to hire workers. She said there would be “no amnesty” and suggested Americans on Medicaid who are subject to new work requirements as a result of the recent tax bill passage could fill the gap. Those requirements will be phased in starting in 2027. (Link to this post.)
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