According to a new release from the Georgia Farm Bureau (GFB), the issue of foreign-owned land might make an appearance in the state legislature in next year’s session. The director of the National Agricultural Law Center told the GFB it’s getting increasing attention across the country and is likely to be raised in Georgia.
“Georgia’s had an experience with this. There were a couple of proposals,” Pittman said. “They did not make it out of the legislature. I know that it’s likely to come back up.” A bill sponsored by Sen. Brandon Beach, R-Alpharetta, passed in the Senate last year but failed to make it out of the House. That bill would have limited ownership of land deemed “foreign adversaries” by the U.S. Commerce Department or “Country of Particular Concern” as determined by the U.S. Secretary of State – both designations would include the People’s Republic of China. China is obviously still a major trading partner with the U.S. but many of the other countries on the list are unlikely to be much of a threat in Georgia, such as Burma, Cuba, Iran or Pakistan. Saudi Arabia is included however, a country with increasing presence but some volatility.
Beach noted a particular focus on China during debate on his bill last year. “This bill just prohibits the Chinese Communist government from buying our Georgia farmland … I want to make sure that we aren’t having Communist China running our farms,” he told Atlanta Civic Circle. Currently, China owns somewhere around 400,000 acres of U.S. agricultural land. Total foreign ownership however is down a couple million acres since 2020. The federal government does not restrict foreign ownership but it does monitor it. In Georgia, the two largest foreign owners by far is Germany (271,000 acres) and Canada (217,000). The United Kingdom is third with only 43,000.
In 2023, 12 states enacted new foreign ownership laws (Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, Ohio, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho and Utah – all states with a Republican legislature or governor). Five states have no laws relating to foreign ownership and 21, including Georgia, have laws that allow it.
A recent report noted that more than 40 million acres were owned by foreign buyers at the end of 2021. That number is nearly triple what it was just 20 years ago. A handful of states, with Oklahoma as the most direct, have limited or nearly banned foreign ownership – pointing to China as the most worrying example of foreign owners. Data shows though that most of the foreign-owned land is by European or Canadian companies buying land to develop wind or solar energy projects. Smithfield Foods is a major pork-producer and is Chinese-owned. Indeed, a Smithfield property of a couple thousand acres is the biggest Chinese-owned plot in Oklahoma.
With election year on the horizon, the issue might become an opportunity for candidates to make news.
