Trump admin announces agriculture security plan including crackdown on Chinese farmland ownership; Rollins says no amnesty for illegal farmworkers
"We are taking our farmland back."
This morning, members of the Trump cabinet led by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced a plan of action related to national security and agriculture policy.
“As stewards of creation we have an obligation to protect it, and in protecting it we protect ourselves,” Rollins said, opening today’s press conference at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) headquarters in Washington, D.C. “We’re here to talk about that today, and we’re here to address one particular facet of that stewardship, responding to one particular type of threat.”
The USDA’s National Farm Security Action Plan names seven areas of concern. Rollins focused her remarks on the first: farmland ownership by foreign adversaries.
“Today we are taking this purpose and our American farmland back,” Rollins said. “Perhaps the most important, the first of the seven is securing and protecting American farmland ownership, actively engaging at every level of government to take swift legislative and executive action to ban the purchase of American farmland by Chinese nationals and other foreign adversaries.”
Rollins displayed a map of Chinese-owned U.S. farmland, with military bases marked. Officials present included Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, as well as several governors and members of Congress.
“As someone who is charged with leading the Defense Department, I want to know who owns the land around our bases and strategic bases,” Hegseth said. “And getting an understanding of why foreign entities, foreign companies, foreign individuals might be buying up land around those bases.”
Foreign investors are required by the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA) to report all farmland holdings to the Secretary of Agriculture. Rollins’ new plan includes “aggressive” reform to the AFIDA process, including an online filing system, making reports publicly available, and increasing penalties for late or false filings.
“In my state of Alabama alone, they own 2.2 million acres of farmland,” said Senator Tommy Tuberville. “Foreign adversaries.”
The plan outlines additional actions to protect farmland ownership including working with states and creating an online portal for citizens to report concerns about foreign influence in the supply chain.
When asked if she expects cooperation from Democrat governors, Rollins said that while red states have led on the issue, protecting farmland should be bipartisan.
“I have to believe that even the Democrat governors and even the blue states realize what a massive threat this is to national security,” she said. “We plan to work with everyone.”
“A country has to be able to feed itself, fuel itself, and fight for itself to truly be free,” said Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, one of the first states to ban Chinese land ownership and the first to evict a Chinese-owned company from its farmland. She stressed that federal buy-in is essential.
In a cabinet meeting held later in the day, Rollins urged Congress to act.
“The states have begun taking a leadership role to ban the purchasing of China farmland. Obviously Congress needs to step up and catch up,” she stated.
Addressing biothreats, agroterrorism, and industry security
Other action items include preventing agroterrorism, biothreats, SNAP fraud, attacks on agriculture companies including cyberattacks, and stolen trade research and innovation. Last month, the Department of Justice charged multiple foreign nationals with smuggling a dangerous fungus into the U.S.
“Food security, just like energy resilience, just like where we get our water, that’s all national security,” Hegseth said. “We would be asleep at the wheel if we were not fully a party to an effort like this to ensure that our nation had the food supply it needs.”
Peter Navarro, senior counselor to President Trump on trade and manufacturing, called out Chinese ownership of key American food and agriculture companies.
“The Chinese bought Smithfield Foods and basically control about an eighth of the world’s pork supply now,” Navarro said. He said that Chinese nationals were also allowed to purchase the American seed company Syngenta.
“No amnesty” for illegal farmworkers
Following the press conference, Rollins took several questions on immigration. Last week, Trump discussed creating a program to allow farmworkers to stay in the U.S.
Rollins insisted there will be no amnesty for illegal farmworkers, adding that the 34 million “able-bodied adults” on Medicaid should help fill the gap left by deportations thanks to new work requirements for Medicaid access included in the budget reconciliation bill Trump signed into law last week.
Later in the day, the president backed his Ag Secretary when asked by reporters about her comments.
“There’s no amnesty,” Trump said. “What we’re doing is we’re getting rid of criminals, but we are doing a work program.”
He asked Rollins to provide further details. She said that the proposed program will ensure farmers have access to the labor they need but would not give amnesty to illegal workers.
Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer reiterated that the plan would “answer the need of our farmers and ranchers and producers” but would “not include an amnesty program at all.”
Details of the work program for immigrants have not been provided.
In June, Trump told Maria Bartiromo of FOX News that he wants to find a way to facilitate farm labor.
“I’m the strongest immigration guy that there’s ever been, but I’m also the strongest farmer guy that there’s ever been, and that includes also hotels and, you know, places where people work, a certain group of people work,” Trump said on FOX’s Sunday Morning Futures. “We’re working on it right now. We’re going to work it so that, some kind of a temporary pass where people pay taxes, where the farmer can have a little control as opposed to, you walk in and take everybody away.”
Industry concerns over Southern border trade
Some ranchers feel that the USDA’s publicized national security plan is ironic given the administration’s decision to re-open Southern ports of entry, despite concern over a New World Screwworm (NWS) outbreak in Mexico.
On Monday, the USDA began its phased re-opening of the Southern border to live cattle, horse, and bison imports. Critics say the USDA is reacting to pressure from industry giants including the major meatpackers against the interests of small producers.
According to the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), there has not been a “notable increase” in reported NWS cases in Mexico or any “northward movement” of NWS over the last eight weeks, and that APHIS agents have released over 100 million sterile NWS flies in Mexico each week since ports were closed on May 11. This was the strategy used to eradicate NWS from the U.S. in the 1970s.
But industry insiders are expressing concern that re-opening ports of entry is premature. Catharine Gillihan of Meriwether Farms says she was locked out of her X account after posting a photo of NWS, a flesh-eating maggot that can also affect humans.
“There have been 23 confirmed cases of human infection of the New World Screwworm in Mexico,” she wrote. “13 individuals are still hospitalized and battling the infection.”
Gillihan says keeping Southern ports of entry closed is a “national security issue” and called on the USDA to appoint a new head of APHIS.
“The current head of APHIS is a career holdover from the Biden administration, responsible for the mishandling of the Avian Flu, which caused egg prices to skyrocket in 2023 and 2024,” Gillihan said. “It is critical for the head of APHIS to be fully aligned with the Trump Administration on topics of both border and national security.”
Important info. Thx for reporting.
Now I can listen. Rad