The data doesn't support this conclusion. China only accounts for less than 3 percent of US agricultural imports, but the sky's always falling at Spectator World.
Posted on 11/18/2025 9:29:37 PM PST by SeekAndFind
For all the talk about artificial intelligence and quantum supremacy, the fate of civilizations still depends on breakfast. ChatGPT can’t grow corn. Empires rise on stomachs as much as on silicon. And America’s food system – long dismissed as safe and self-sufficient – has quietly become a front line in the US-China rivalry. We act as if lunch is inevitable, but Beijing knows that food is power.
A new report from the America First Policy Institute should wake us up. Washington long treated agriculture as a post-political space where globalization could do no harm, and was therefore happy to let much of the nation ship its growth to China. As Ambassador Kip Tom and Royce Hood argue, China has thus taken over critical pieces of the US agricultural system and food supply. That’s created an obvious strategic vulnerability.
Through state-owned giants such as WH Group and SinoChem, the CCP has spent the last decade spreading its tentacles through America’s food production. Its means of doing so have been so patient and banal that it’s gone mostly unnoticed.
Consider Smithfield Foods. Once a model of American agribusiness, it was bought in 2013 by WH Group, then called Shuanghui – a Chinese conglomerate financed by state banks and guided by Beijing’s Five-Year Plan directive to “go abroad.” At the time, as Tom and Hood indicate, it was the largest-ever acquisition of an American company by a Chinese firm.
The Obama administration approved the deal despite some bipartisan objections. In one stroke, China gained control over roughly a quarter of US pork processing. At the time, the story barely registered beyond the business pages. Now it reads like an opening chapter in a longer, scary story. Say what you will about the CCP, but dumb they are not.
Smithfield’s market power lets it shape prices and standards across the industry, and the profits flow neatly back to China. During the pandemic, as American grocery shelves emptied, the company still managed to ship thousands of tons of pork to Chinese ports each month.
Then there is Syngenta. The seed and agrochemical titan was acquired in 2017 by ChemChina, a state-owned enterprise that later merged into SinoChem. Despite being headquartered in Switzerland, Syngenta is now an organ of Chinese industrial policy. Its Chinese subsidiaries are linked – through a thicket of shell companies – to Xinjiang entities accused of using forced labor.
One of them, the report notes, sells seeds directly to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, the paramilitary conglomerate that anchors Beijing’s campaign of “re-education” aimed at the region’s Uyghur population. So while American farmers buy Syngenta products to improve yields, the profits feed into a system of repression half a world away. That is globalization at its bleakest.
Then there’s the question of data – which matters more now than ever, considering that data-access is the CCP’s greatest advantage in the AI race. Modern farms are sensor-laden, drone-mapped, and algorithm-advised. Syngenta and its partners, including Chinese drone manufacturers DJI and XAG, sell “smart agriculture” platforms that collect torrents of data on American soil composition, crop patterns, and yields. Under China’s National Intelligence Law, all that information can be requisitioned by the state. Imagine handing a rival superpower a continuously updated MRI of your own food system – and calling it efficiency.
China views American openness as weakness – and its own opacity as strength. We’d do well to understand that mindset without arrogance. While we assumed moral superiority would carry the day, China stayed focused on the simpler, harder truths of power.
It would be funny if it weren’t true. While our media spent years fixating on TikTok tracking teenagers – a real concern, to be sure – China nonchalantly secured access to the datasets that actually keep people alive.
None of this is accidental. The CCP’s economic blueprints explicitly instruct its companies to secure global agricultural assets to achieve self-sufficiency through overseas acquisition. What Beijing calls “food security,” Washington calls “foreign direct investment.” One phrase belongs to a civilization that thinks in centuries; the other, to one that thinks – if it does at all – in dollar signs.
Our policymakers should compel divestiture of strategic assets and restrict our fiercest geopolitical competitor from owning American land. If “dominance” sounds too impolite, we can at least strive for symmetry. The alternative is to tolerate theft and give up the defense of our own farmland.
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They haven’t taken over my food supply. I take care of my own.
That explains the dead chickens.
If there is a war, those business will just be seized. They can not ship those factories and processing plants back to China.
Bkmk
Thank you for that perspective. Less than 3% of our agricultural imports? Even our ‘Cousin’ Canada provides more than that, at about 20%.
All the more reason to grow your own using non-hybrid seeds, so you can save the seeds.
It seems, from the article, that it’s not about how much food China supplies to the US, but how much of the food production in the US is owned by Chinese interests.
Great idea but when people are hungry they will TAKE all you hard work and you will be left w nothing too. You will become the walmart for the ebt shoppers
“They haven’t taken over my food supply. I take care of my own.”
That’s great for little old you, one amongst a 360 million U.S. population. Meanwhile the Chinese continue to buy up American farmland, strategically located military-wise also, I must say, while we politically are asleep at the wheel.
Luckily, some in our political world are waking up to the danger. Acting on it is another story. Luckily for our country, Prez Trump and his Admin are very aware now of the problem at hand and will take action, at least for the term of his Presidency. If the Dems return to power, all bets are off, as Biden’s Admin allowed the sell-off of our farmlands, and any other Dem regime will do the same.
Scary. For AM.
If they can find us and if they make it out as far as we are.
But I don’t see this happening suddenly.
It also helps to live in a gun friendly state. Between that and the weather ( for part of the year at least) there will be a lot of attrition of groups trying to pillage.
Not saying it can’t happen, but the chances of it happening depend a lot on where you live.
I believe the article isn’t as much about how much farmland China owns, but how much of the agricultural processing companies that China owns.
Chinese entities and investors currently own about 277,000 to 384,000 acres of U.S. farmland, according to USDA and major media reports from 2023–2025. This includes major agribusiness acquisitions—most notably Smithfield Foods, which controls over 130,000 acres under Chinese corporate ownership after being acquired by China's WH Group.
As a percentage: Chinese ownership is a tiny fraction of U.S. agricultural land:
Foreign entities own around 45 million acres of American farmland, about 2–3.6% of all U.S. agricultural land.
Chinese entities own less than 1% of all foreign-held U.S. farmland: about 0.6% (using 277,000 of 45 million acres) to 0.8–0.9% (using 384,000 acres).
Relative to all private agricultural land in the U.S., China’s holdings are estimated at about 0.02–0.03%.
Smithfield Foods: The largest U.S. pork processor, acquired by WH Group in 2013. Smithfield controls about half of all Chinese-held U.S. farmland.
Other major owners: A Chinese billionaire (Sun Guangxin) controls about 100,000 acres through companies in Texas. There are a handful of other corporate and investment entities.
Major agribusiness deals are limited: apart from Smithfield Foods, few national-level U.S. agriculture companies are majority-owned by Chinese interests.
| Metric | Amount Chinese-Owned | % of Total |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. agricultural land | 277,000–384,000 acres | ~0.02–0.03% |
| Foreign-held farmland | 277,000–384,000 acres | ~0.6–0.8% |
| Major U.S. agri-corporations | 1 (Smithfield, largest pork) | Tiny fraction |
Thank a Free Traitor. Easy to do here since about half of our so called Conservative freepers are Free Traitors.
None of our Free Traitor posters will be on this thread .
In the light of the below response (note that I copy the response, then past it on the left pane of https://text-html.com/ which renders it in html, though perplexity.ai offers free download as PDF, Markdown or DOCX), apparently AI has little problem with paywalls. So after the below response, I asked it about that.
You're correct—the central concern about Chinese acquisitions in American agriculture isn't just the absolute acreage or number of companies owned. The strategic nature of these purchases, such as control of major processing companies (like Smithfield Foods), access to proprietary seed technologies (Syngenta), and especially the massive data harvesting capabilities through "smart agriculture" platforms, raises unique security and economic issues.
Supply Chain Influence:
By acquiring Smithfield Foods, China gained control of roughly 25% of US pork processing, giving it leverage over price, supply chain operations, and export flows. In times of crisis (such as the pandemic), this allowed pork to continue flowing to China even as American shelves emptied.
Access to Agricultural Technology:
ChemChina’s purchase of Syngenta, a major global seed and agrochemical company, gave China significant influence over US farming inputs. This not only impacts seed choices but also channels profits and proprietary technology back to Chinese entities.
Data Acquisition:
Chinese-controlled companies like Syngenta and collaboration with drone manufacturers such as DJI allow the systematic collection of high-resolution data on US soil composition, crop yields, and farm operations. Under China's intelligence laws, this information can be requisitioned by the Chinese state—giving it a constantly updated, detailed map of US agricultural vulnerabilities and capacities.
Food Security Leverage:
The long-term goal, articulated in Chinese policy documents, is to secure supply chains and food resources globally through direct asset acquisition and data dominance, which is viewed as a matter of national security ("food security") by Beijing.
Conclusion
The strategic, data-driven, and vertically integrated nature of China's acquisitions is a major concern for US food security, privacy, competitiveness, and even national security. The potential for economic coercion and the ability to map and potentially disrupt agricultural operations distinguishes these investments from generic foreign ownership.
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