In a move widely seen as an effort to combat Chinese espionage and bioterrorism against the U.S., the Trump administration has announced plans to ban foreign nationals from acquiring American farmland, among other food security measures.

On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins unveiled the National Farm Security Action Plan initiative alongside Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, as well as several governors and senators. The plan calls for not only addressing foreign farmland ownership but also “[r]efocus[ing] domestic investment into key manufacturing sectors” with “non-adversarial partners to work with when domestic production is not available,” protecting the U.S. food supply from “fraud and foreign exploitation,” cracking down on bioterrorism, and increasing protection for farms, food, and supply chains, among other measures.

The effort comes amid an ongoing pattern of Chinese companies closely tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) purchasing vast amounts of U.S. farmland, some near military bases. In 2022, it was discovered that Chinese food manufacturer Fufeng Group acquired 370 acres of land just 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base. At the time, a group of senators wrote to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) expressing concern that “Fufeng operations could provide cover for PRC surveillance or interference with the missions located at that installation, given Fufeng Group’s reported ties to the Chinese Communist Party.” Experts further pointed out that the base serves as an important ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) hub for piloting unmanned drones overseas and also as a satellite ground station where sensitive data is transferred from space to earth.

“Foreign ownership of land near strategic bases and U.S. military installations poses a serious threat to our national security,” Hegseth remarked during the action plan press conference. “The Farm Security Plan will put America First and keep our bases across the homeland secure.”

Chinese-owned companies currently possess 384,000 acres of American farmland, which amounts to a 30% increase since 2019. During a press conference discussing the new action plan, Counselor to the President Peter Navarro observed that Chinese companies have also acquired American meat-processing companies like Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer. “We’re the United States, but they treat us like a colony,” he contended.

As noted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) press release on the action plan, the initiative has taken on particular importance in light of the recent string of incidents involving Chinese nationals attempting to smuggle highly toxic substances and dangerous parasites into the U.S. that could be used as bioweapons. Last month, Chanxuan Han, a Wuhan-based researcher, attempted to smuggle “biological materials related to round worms, a parasitic organism” into a University of Michigan laboratory. Just a week prior, two other Chinese nationals were arrested for attempting to smuggle a highly toxic fungus into a University of Michigan lab, which the USDA described as “a potential agroterrorism weapon responsible for billions in global crop losses.”

“Farm security is national security,” Bondi stated at the USDA press conference. “The Department of Justice will continue working to prosecute those who threaten American agriculture, investigate cases of potential agro-terrorism, and protect America’s farmers from illegal threats at home and abroad.”

China expert and author Gordon Chang, who serves as a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, told The Washington Stand that the Trump administration’s initiative to bar China from acquiring American cropland is welcome news.

“Chinese nationals have been using our farm and ranch land for criminal and malign purposes, but this is also an issue of reciprocity,” he pointed out. “No American may own a square inch in China, so why do we allow Chinese nationals to own square miles here?”

“It’s time to take back our land,” Chang underscored. “We cannot afford to have a hostile foreign power in possession of our soil.”