Episode Six in the Continuing Saga of Dustin Kittle vs Farm Credit Admin. Communist Corn State

On By rushbabe49In Authoritarianism, business, Culture, Economics, environmentalism, Food and drink, government, Guest Blogger, History, Law and Justice, Media bias, Nature, Politics in the Age of Obama, Politics in the Age of Trump, social media

This post is copied over from X/Twitter for those readers who do not wish to join. Link at the end of the quoted post. I am continually amazed at how Dustin took on the government behemoth, and has stuck with it for so long. Everyone needs to know about this, as the scandal involves the American heartland and our food supply.

Today’s writer:

@AshleyPosey22 Another player in the employee pipeline at Summit Carbon Solutions is past Iowa Governor, and former US Ambassador to China, Terry Branstad – someone China’s president, Xi Jinping, refers to as his “old friend”, with their relationship dating back to 1985 when Xi led a Chinese delegation to Iowa to learn about agricultural technologies.  And when VP Biden invited Xi to visit him and Obama in DC in February 2012, Xi’s next stop was to Iowa to visit his old friend Branstad in Iowa.   It would be the following year when Smithfield Foods – the largest pork producer in the US (founded in 1936 in Smithfield, Virginia – about 30 mins from where I grew up

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) was acquired by a Chinese company with backing from the Chinese government. The 2013 purchase of Smithfield marked China’s largest purchase of a US assets, at $7.1 billion.   The purchase of Smithfield meant 146,000 acres of US land, concentrated mostly in North Carolina, Missouri, Utah, Virginia, Colorado, and Oklahoma – states hosting Smithfield’s hog farms, processing plants, feed mills, etc. – was now owned by Chinese parties.   Their acquisition of more than 400 Smithfield-owned hog farms and an additional 2,000 independent farms gave China access to a well-established and integrated food system in the US where it could increase its access to quality pork, while circumventing US tariffs on feed grain or pork exports and offshoring the environmental impacts of feeding its country.   The US Government’s Committee on Foreign Investment, the federal government’s interagency committee that reviews national security risks of foreign investments, \ approved the purchase in September 2013.   Just 3 years later, Smithfield bought Clougherty Packing from Hormel Foods Corp for $145 million, and in return acquired two processing facilities in California and three farms in Wyoming, California, and Arizona.   In the fall of 2016, Smithfield purchased grain elevators in Harpster and Morral, Ohio.   The Chinese acquisitions continued in 2017 with Smithfield’s purchase of Kansas City Sausage Co.

And in December 2022, a Chinese food manufacturer with ties to the Chinese government, Fufeng Group Ltd., acquired hundreds of acres of land near a US military installation in North Dakota, prompting a review by the CFIUS, who eventually determined it did not have jurisdiction over the transaction and would be taking no further action. That land is located about 12 miles from the Grand Forks Air Force Base, which houses some of the US’s top intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. The location of the land close to the base is particularly convenient for monitoring air traffic flows in and out of the base, among other security-related concerns.   Foreign investment in US agricultural land grew to over 40 million acres in 2022, an increase of 50 percent since 2017. Much of this increase was due to foreign-owned wind companies that obtained long-term leases to build wind turbines on agricultural land.   And with these purchases seemingly popping-up in strategic locations near sensitive military installations, the number of gaps in the US government’s review of such foreign investment is absolutely terrifying.   Basically, we have no way of knowing the nature and extent of associated national security risks from the massive amounts of US agricultural land being lost to foreign interests, and here’s part of why:   While foreign investors in US agricultural land are supposed to self-report the transactions to the USDA within 90 days of an agricultural land transaction:   –       The USDA’s reporting program was not designed as a national security program and does not collect all items of interest to the national security community such as the investor’s parent companies or major shareholders. –       The program is entirely self-reliant on foreign persons voluntarily reporting the purchase with no way of detecting undisclosed transactions. –       The reporting requirements lack rules and transparency related to ownership, use, and change in use. It is unclear to what extent USDA conducts field assessments or tracks changes in land use or ownership after the initial paperwork is filed. –       USDA’s collection processes involve paper-based reporting that is compiled in a manual, error-prone process, and its data is not always accurate. Congress required USDA to create an online submission database but it has not done so. –       There’s a lack of enforcement mechanisms in place regarding false reporting or no reporting at all, meaning, foreign firms may easily circumvent current reporting requirements and repurpose the purchased land with little concern of repercussions from USDA due to the lack of enforcement measures in place. –       USDA does not share complete and timely data with CFIUS or other agencies. Without the proper data, it is impossible to monitor or detect or even know the current threats to national security in place on our own soil.   And at the same time, our courts are shutting down attempts at the state level to protect US soil and farms. Just a few weeks ago, the Eleventh Circuit issued an injunction blocking Florida’s bill restricting such foreign investment in real estate.

By the time Branstad resigned as Ambassador in 2020, Chinese entities owned around 352,140 acres of US agricultural land. This was 2,467% more than the 13,270 acres they owned in 2010.   Yes, you are reading that correctly.   Two thousand four hundred and sixty-seven percent more US agricultural acres owned by Chinese entities in a ten-year period.   Other examples of Chinese investment in US agribusiness and land include: –       COFCO’s (a Chinese state-owned food processing company HQ’ed in Beijing) 2017 partnership with GROWMARK, a US grain logistics company. The deal gave COFCO joint ownership and operation of a Mississippi barge, truck, and rail terminal in Illinois. –       China’s New Hope Liuhe invested $127 million in Lansing Trade Group, a grain trading company, giving it 20 percent ownership in the Lansing and access to a number of the company’s grain elevators.   It is also interesting to note the types of land Chinese investors are purchasing.   Chinese buyers largely invest in what USDA categorizes as “other land.” USDA defines this type of land as having unclassified uses like swamps, marshes, or bare rock. It’s not intended for growing crops or livestock grazing. While Chinese investors are notably distinct from other foreign holders of US agricultural land in this regard (with “other land” accounting for about 3/4ths of Chinese-owned agricultural land), it’s not clear why Chinese investors hold so much other land.

t’s not just agricultural land that foreign interests are after either. They realize that, in many areas of agriculture and food production, the US has something they don’t – infrastructure, land mass, intellectual property, or an already built-out supply chain. By accessing these areas – whether through capital or illicit means (like theft of trade secrets) – China & foreign parties gain useful intelligence for achieving agricultural & food dominance.   The United States is a global leader in all of these fields.   Creating a single hybrid seed requires breeding two inbred seed line & can cost up to $30 million to $40 million in lab costs, field work, & trial and error, not to mention the time spent completing this work.   Chinese nationals are smuggling seeds out of the US to replicate, rather than developing them themselves, or for potentially more nefarious purposes, such as biological warfare or to decimate US crop supplies in order to leverage power over food supply.   In2022, Xiang Haitao, a Chinese national residing in Chesterfield, MO, pled guilty to economic espionage conspiracy. Xiang admitted to stealing a valuable algorithm by transferring it to a memory card and attempting to take it to the People’s Republic of China for the benefit of Chinese government. The stolen algorithm would’ve helped accelerate technological advancements for the Chinese government & companies.   Robert Mo, a Chinese scientist, was convicted of stealing GM seeds from Iowan cornfields to send back to China in 2016. At the time, he worked for a company closely integrated with the Chinese government, manufacturing and distributing feed products. After several years with the company, Mo’s boss suggested he “help find a shortcut” to ease China’s food security concerns. He sent Mo to Iowa, where he collected thousands of seed samples from Monsanto and Pioneer test fields and shipped them to China.   While China’s main interest in obtaining GM seeds from the US may be in improving its crop yields, the more nefarious purpose of potential weaponization of agricultural IP is terrifying.   As one Chinese expert from the Chinese Academy of Sciences notes, “An important feature of genetically modified technology is that reverse engineering it is very easy to accomplish.” By doing so, they could easily introduce a disease to decimate US crops.   Perhaps indicating sentiment among Chinese scientists, Jiang Gaoming, a researcher and professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in an article on US biodefense efforts, encouraged other Chinese scientists to channel their research toward China’s biological defense, commenting, “Friends, GMO experts, your wisdom should be aimed at the enemy, not your own.”   While China has made great strides in animal husbandry, it continues its efforts to evolve the quality of its livestock.   Ronald Lemenager, professor and cochair of the Beef Center at Purdue University, says “When you have a nation’s diet changing as rapidly as China’s, the most efficient way to build up production is to improve your animal genetics. We have the genetics they want.” China has purchased millions of US animals as breeding stock, saving decades of time & resources on the advanced agricultural research that goes into improving animal health & nutritional quality.   Consolidating some of its production within the US, e.g. with pork, also expedites the production process while shifting its more environmentally taxing agricultural practices to the US. Feeding the herds in the US is cheaper (because they can circumvent tariffs on importing meat or grains to feed animals), the farms are more expansive, & the environmental concerns do not impact China’s land.   By purchasing the largest pork producer, it also gives them a convenient, yet undue, leverage over US food supply chains.

I hope all my old and new readers will read this series as a call to action, if they want our family farms to be able to continue to provide America and the world with the best food.

#SaveOurFarms

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