Foreign farmland ownership violates U.S. sovereignty and security

Aiding and abetting a foreign enemy is treason. So when a bunch of corporate-backed Missouri politicians passed a bill that greenlit a Chinese invasion of Missouri farmland, we should call it what it is.

Recently, on a farm in Palmyra owned by a family who has been farming Marion County for four generations, a crowd of independent farmers talked to me about getting backstabbed by their politicians.

In March of 2013, the executives of Smithfield, a family-farm-killing agricultural monopoly and the state’s biggest pork producer, began plotting with Chinese officials to sell the company and its 40,000 acres of Missouri farmland to China.

There was just one pesky problem: Missouri, where a large portion of Smithfield’s operations were located, had a law on the books prohibiting the ownership of agricultural land by foreign entities.

So Smithfield did what corporate America does when it needs to break the law — buy off the politicians to change it. Smithfield was already a huge political player, well versed in lobbying and lining the pockets of politicians here in Missouri and across the country. When Smithfield told them to jump, our politicians didn’t ask why, they asked how high.

Just two months later, Missouri Democrats and Republicans voted to let foreign countries buy up Missouri farmland. Within two weeks, Smithfield announced the deal: a Chinese multinational corporation would purchase Smithfield for $4.27 billion and take control of its 40,000 acres of Missouri farmland in the “largest Chinese takeover of a U.S. company” up to that point. In the U.S. Congress, politicians kept taking checks from Smithfield’s corporate PAC and looked the other way as China settled our land and disrupted our food supply chain.

The farmers in Palmyra, like those I met in the swine barn at the Missouri State Fair, feel betrayed.

For a century, family farmers fed states like ours. The family farmer cares more about food safety and environmental impact than multinational corporations because family farmers look over their fence and actually see their customers looking right back at them, depending on them. They’re not sitting with a bunch of billionaires in China making decisions about our food without ever having stepped foot in the United States, let alone Missouri. The corporate cabal cosplaying as a “food provider” is destroying our rural communities.

We should all be furious. This is a national security threat. Around the time this deal went down in 2013, I was a U.S. Marine serving in Afghanistan. Coming home from my three deployments, I saw how our state had been stripped for parts by corporate monopolies buying off our political elite. Smithfield was the largest campaign donor to the guy who wrote the bill that helped sell our land. Today, tens of thousands of acres of Missouri farmland are owned by foreign conglomerates. Smithfield (China) and JBS (Brazil) now control 50 percent of U.S. pork. Big Ag has put 90 percent of Missouri hog producers out of business. And just three companies dominate the seed industry, including Bayer (Germany) and ChemChina. All thanks to a feckless political class that doesn’t give a damn about the people they are supposed to serve.

I met with those farmers in Palmyra to hash out a plan, to hear directly from them what we need to do to get our land back. I told them I wasn’t taking a single penny from corporate PACs. I’m taking my marching orders from actual working people in Missouri. Here’s what we came up with.

As senator, I will introduce legislation at the federal level that will not only ban foreign ownership of American agricultural land but also force the sale of any farmland currently owned by foreign entities back into the hands of American farmers. The legislation would also guarantee that land goes to real American farmers, not Big Ag.

This is about restoring working people to power, putting the family farmer back in a position to run their farms the way they want to and not be beholden to foreign-backed agricultural monopolies that pillage our land. Family farmers aren’t looking for a handout — they are for competition, a fair playing field that every politician should be invested in creating, sustaining and growing.

It’s time we take our land back from China. And it’s time we take America back from treasonous politicians who strip our communities for parts.

Lucas Kunce is a marine veteran and a Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Missouri.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Opinion: Foreign farm ownership violates US sovereignty and security