Foreign investors owned or leased 3.5% of America's farm, ranch and forest land in 2023, a 1.5-million-acre increase from the year prior, according to a new Agriculture Department report.
Foreign investors held 45.8 million acres of land last year, according to USDA’s most recent data. About half the growth between 2022 and 2023 was in New Mexico, Texas and Arkansas.
Investors from Canada, including entities owned entirely by Canadians and by U.S. corporations with Canadian shareholders, hold 15.3 million acres of land, or 33% of all the foreign-owned land reported to USDA. Investors from the Netherlands followed, accounting for 11% of all foreign-held landholdings, while Italy and the United Kingdom each made up 6%.
Chinese investors only reported holding 277,336 acres of agricultural land as of Dec. 31, despite being the subject of lawmaker concern in recent years. This represents less than 1% of all foreign owned-agricultural land.
According to an analysis by American Farm Bureau Federation economist Danny Munch, Chinese investors’ landholdings saw an 11% decline between 2022 and 2023. He said a downward trend in Chinese landholdings between 2021 and 2023 may stem both from USDA’s decision to reclassify land held by an U.S.-based asset management company and from a decrease in holdings by a Chinese billionaire involved in a Texas renewable energy project.
Ninety-four percent of landholdings by Chinese investors belonged to five companies: Murphy Brown (Smithfield Foods), Brazos Highland Properties, Murphy Brown (Smithfield Foods) of Missouri, Harvest Texas and U.S. Agri-Chemicals Corp, according to USDA. The Chinese government is not reported as owning any U.S. land.
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