Whether it’s anxieties about the Chinese government supplying weapons to Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s war machine in Ukraine—or spy balloons looming over the American heartland—national security concerns relating to China are on the rise. But in rural states, like my own home of Missouri, our concerns are as much about the security of our food system and local communities as they are about espionage or warfare.
Increasingly, rural communities are speaking out about the extent of land owned by massive, multinational foreign corporations. There’s growing momentum in states across the U.S. to restrict land purchases by Chinese entities. At least 11 state legislatures are considering such measures, such as a Virginia bill banning the sale of agricultural land to “foreign adversaries,” including China, and multiple bills introduced in my home state.
How did we get to the point where multinational agribusiness corporations across the globe hold so much power and influence in the heartland?
The roots of this issue were planted decades ago with the rise of corporate control in agriculture. Rural communities, anchored by family farms, are being hollowed out as jobs disappear, social fabric is ruptured, and the environmental landscape deteriorates as a result of the corporate takeover of agriculture and food production.
Here in Missouri, Smithfield Foods, which controls 25 percent of the U.S. pork industry, was bought out by China’s leading pork producer, Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd (now called WH Group), and now owns over 42,000 acres of Missouri farmland. To make matters worse, JBS, a Brazilian corporation and the world’s largest meatpacker, also controls nearly 25 percent of the U.S. pork industry. This was only possible after decades of lax antitrust enforcement, which allowed corporations to get that big in the first place. Over the years, our state has been transformed from a rich system of tens of thousands of independent family farm hog producers to a landscape where a few corporations own and control a vast majority of the hogs.
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While there are about 14 states with laws that currently prohibit or restrict foreign ownership of agricultural land, the laws are insufficient when it comes to the corporate takeover of our farms and food system. In fact, some corporate laws are used to exempt corporations from liability and oversight. A corporation can form multiple LLCs to hold parcels of land under a legal veil and evade investigation on whether they’re connected financially to foreign corporations or foreign governments.
I’ve spoken with our members and farmers across the Midwest, from Missouri to Iowa to South Dakota, who have felt the negative impacts of land buyouts and corporate consolidation for years. As long as this continues to be the case, we’re all vulnerable to the whims of multinational, billion-dollar corporate agribusiness.
I urge our elected representatives that care about our agricultural heritage—and our farming futures—to move forward with bills restricting multinational and foreign corporate land ownership. We need bold policies to better track foreign ownership of our farmland, make sure that agriculture is subject to the same kind of national security review that other acquisitions receive, and make it clear that absentee investor and corporate control of our food system and farmland is a problem.
To make that possible, the Farm Bill is a good vehicle. Instead of waiting for foreign entities to trip alarm wires, our leaders in Congress and the Biden administration need to use this moment to proactively rein in the corporations extracting wealth from rural communities and pass policies that support independent family farmers, our local economies, and a more decentralized food system.
We deserve robust protections that limit corporate control of our farm and food system and create an open, fair, and competitive market for family farmers, new and beginning farmers, and local food systems. Owning a family farm and being able to make a fair living off the land should be the norm in our country, not an unattainable dream.
If our representatives won’t use the Farm Bill to help rural communities, then they don’t deserve our support. It’s time to stand up to them, and their corporate backers, and demand an end to the corporate takeover of our farms and food.
Rhonda Perry is a fifth-generation cattle and grain farmer and executive director of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, an organization representing thousands of Missouri family farmers and their rural communities.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
