It’s time to stop the CCP’s land grab for good

By Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks

America’s farmland belongs to the American people, not to the Chinese Communist Party.

For too long, the CCP has exploited our openness and ignored our laws to infiltrate our economy, compromise our security, and steal our innovation. The FBI estimates we lose between $250 and $600 billion each year to Chinese intellectual property theft. Now, they’re not just stealing ideas, they’re buying the land beneath our feet.

The CCP and its proxies have quietly bought up over 265,000 acres of U.S. farmland, including property dangerously close to at least 19 military bases. They hide behind shell companies and holding groups to avoid detection, while positioning themselves to monitor military activity, disrupt our food supply, and influence our communities from within.

That ends now.

I strongly support the National Farm Security Action Plan, announced last week by President Trump and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. This multi-agency effort will ban the purchase of American farmland by Chinese nationals, terminate existing contracts with foreign adversaries, and claw back land already bought through deceptive practices.

It will also remove hundreds of foreign nationals from sensitive USDA research projects and halt dangerous partnerships, like those exposed at the University of Michigan and even here in Iowa, where USDA was collaborating on bird flu experiments with researchers linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That has now been shut down.

The CCP’s strategy is clear: infiltrate our supply chains, buy up our land, steal intellectual property, manipulate our research, and exploit our free markets, all without firing a shot. We cannot let them succeed.

President Trump’s plan tackles this head-on. It includes tougher penalties for hiding foreign ownership, closer monitoring of foreign supply chain vulnerabilities, and new guardrails to protect our agricultural technology from theft.

This isn’t about isolationism. It’s about survival. It’s about making sure Iowa farmers can compete on a level playing field. It’s about protecting the land that feeds America and defending the bases that protect her.

Iowans deserve to know who owns the land next door. And they deserve leaders who will fight to keep it in American hands.

I’m proud to stand with President Trump to stop the CCP’s land grab, secure our food supply, and defend the homeland. It’s not just smart policy, it’s national security.