Foreign ownership of U.S. farmland is being described as a threat to national security. At a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing, South Dakota Senator John Thune said USDA should have a larger role in overseeing foreign ownership of farmland. Earlier in the week, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that is a difficult job. “Every county has their county recorder and on any given day somebody may walk into that recorder’s office and file a deed and there’s no way of knowing precisely whether or not that is a Chinese purchaser,” said Vilsack. “We would need to work on how we might be able to collect the information and be able to analyze that information in a timely way.” After the hearing, Ranking Member John Boozman said the Agriculture Department should be represented on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, especially when foreign companies are buying land near military bases. That is a reference to the proposed Fufeng corn processing project in Grand Forks.
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