Hinson still concerned about Communist China buying US farmland

MASON CITY — North-central Iowa congresswoman Ashley Hinson was in Mason City this morning and says farmers are still concerned about Communist China buying US farmland.

Hinson says she held a roundtable discussion earlier this week with Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig as well as farmers, community members and commodity-group leaders to talk about the importance of protecting the food supply chain as well as our land from the Chinese Communist Party.  “Ten years ago in Iowa, we know that Chinese spies were actually caught digging up seeds out of the ground. They were going to take them back and reverse engineer them in China to cheat. Since then, we know they’ve been buying up our land here in the United States. They’ve bought a bunch of ag land, they have gained control of our food supply chain by making investments there, and we know they are stealing ag technology and innovation, all while distorting the market with unfair trade practices.”

Hinson says she sees agriculture as our greatest national asset and we can’t allow China to tinker with that.  “We have been asleep at the wheel as Communist China has strategically bought more and more US farmland, including near US military bases. Fortunately, Iowa has long been leading on this issue. We have a lot of laws on the books to prevent foreign ag acquisition in our state. I think we have a strong  state law that needs to be covered with better federal strategy to prevent our adversaries from buying up US ag land.”

Hinson says she’s backing the No American Land for Communist China Act, which would prevent the CCP from purchasing land adjacent to any federally-owned land.  “Communist China is not buying up American land by coincidence. This is intentional. It is a land grab to gain access to national security information and to exert control over our food supply chain. I’d like to think about it this way, would China allow US entities to come over there and buy up their land? Absolutely not, they don’t allow that. So we have been asleep at the wheel for far too long.”

Hinson also helped introduce the Protecting American Agriculture from Foreign Adversaries Act, which passed the House earlier this year. The bill would add the US Secretary of Agriculture to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States for transactions, including land, biotechnology, storage and processing. It also requires the secretary to report any transaction that can be considered a threat to national security.