Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democrat running for president, claims that Wall Street hedge funds and China are on a “farmland purchasing spree,” transforming American farms into “corporate fiefdoms.”
According to Breitbart News, Chinese investors purchased American homes, properties, and land in 2021 for a total of $6.1 billion. Kennedy blasted the federal government on Twitter for allowing hedge firms and other nations like China to purchase American property.
“The agricultural landscapes of America and the rest of the world are becoming corporate fiefdoms, and farmers are becoming serfs, according to a farmland purchasing binge by Wall Street’s enormous hedge funds and China,” Kennedy said. “Many people are unaware that small farms may produce as much or more than giant industrial farms.”
Kennedy’s post on the report from the Center for Research on Globalization describes how a tiny number of corporate goliaths dominate the country’s food business and, as a result, have a stake in who owns American farming.
A USDA report from 2021 states that China also controls roughly 384,000 acres of American agriculture, of which 195,000 acres were bought by Chinese investors and the remaining 189,000 acres by American businesses with Chinese owners.
China purchased 105,000 acres of American farmland in only 2019 and 2020. Then, in 2021, China bought an additional 32,000 acres of property in several US states.
Similar to China, American millionaires are purchasing farms and real estate at unprecedented rates, pushing up the cost of housing for working- and middle-class neighborhoods. Now that he owns about 250,000 acres of American farmland, billionaire Bill Gates is the country’s biggest private owner of agricultural property.
Several months ago, Senators Katie Britt (R-AL) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) introduced legislation that would prohibit Chinese people and Chinese corporations from purchasing and holding real estate in the United States. There are no Democrats who are cosponsoring the measure or its virtually similar counterpart in the House.
