Dive Brief:
- Foreign ownership of U.S. farmland increased by 1.58 million acres in 2023 driven largely by European investments in renewable energy such as solar and wind farms.
- Roughly 46 million acres of crop, pasture and forest lands were held by investors from outside of the United States, marking a 3.6% increase from 2022 to 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest land holdings report.
- Chinese investments decreased 27%, or 106,599 acres, over the period amid national security concerns regarding how much American farmland the country owns. Canada was the largest foreign landholder, followed by the Netherlands, Italy and the U.K.
Dive Insight:
Foreign ownership of American farmland has been a mounting national security concern for Congress, although outside countries comprise 3.6% of total privately held agricultural land in the U.S. — equal in size to about one-fourth of the state of Texas.
As tensions with China flare, U.S. lawmakers have paid considerable attention to the amount of land owned by Chinese investors. Chinese ownership peaked at 383,935 acres in 2021, and several states responded by enacting laws that limit or prevent certain countries from owning farmland within their borders.
Between 2022 to 2023, Chinese investments significantly declined, with an American Farm Bureau Federation analysis attributing the trend in part to a reduction in holdings by a Chinese billionaire who had invested in Southwest Texas for a renewable energy project. Additionally, some land originally listed as Chinese-owned was reclassified after it was confirmed to be owned by a U.S.-based company with operations in China.
While U.S. farmland owned by China, Iran and Cuba is declining, countries such as Canada and Australia are growing their presence with a focus on renewable energy projects.
In 2023, foreign companies with the word “wind” in their names held 11 million acres of U.S. farmland, according to the Farm Bureau report. Meanwhile, “energy” and “solar” companies had nearly 5 million acres and 1.5 million acres, respectively. Investors from Canada accounted for the largest share of land linked to renewable energy projects, followed by Italy and Portugal.
As corporations face pressure to meet environmental goals, many European nations are limited by land availability in their home countries, driving investors to look at other countries for potential projects, Daniel Munch, an economist with the American Farm Bureau, said in a market intelligence report.
“The data reaffirms the majority of land is owned by investors from nations considered friendly to the U.S., though…data reporting limitations prevent us from accessing a precise breakdown,” Munch wrote.