Texas Lawmakers Could Address Chinese-Owned Farmland Next Session

Chinese-owned U.S. farmland is likely to be a topic of discussion with possible action coming in Texas and for the United States.

President-elect Donald Trump has briefly mentioned before a plan to ban the Chinese Communist Party from buying U.S. farmland and further infiltrating the U.S. agriculture system.

Texas tops the list for Chinese-owned land across America with about 192,000 acres. The next closest state is North Carolina with a little over 49,000 acres.

Brandon Waltens, Senior Editor at the Texas Scorecard, said the ball is in the court of the Texas Legislature to work on legislation in 2025 that addresses foreign-owned farmland in America.

In 2023, the Texas Senate passed legislation to clamp down on Texas land owned by 'hostile, foreign entities.' The bill died in the House, leaving a lot of lawmakers frustrated. However, the Texas GOP have said that it'll be a priority in 2025.

"This is something a lot of lawmakers in the Texas House say they want to see something done on," said Waltens. "I do expect that this is going to be an issue that is tackled and hopefully tackled early on,"

Neighboring state Arkansas has enacted legislation that goes after foreign ownership of their land. Waltens said Texas is a "hot bed" for foreign-owned land in the U.S. and is more than capable of following the lead of Arkansas.

"Texas certainly has the power to do so and the fact that Texas has the most foreign-owned land in the country should raise the stakes of this situation even higher," he said.

According to Waltens, the problem with the Chinese Communist Party taking over farmland in the U.S. has only gotten worse. A Trump administration may alter the strategy from the Chinese on if they were to try and expand.

"This is something they're not going to be able to ignore this time around," Waltens said about the Texas Legislature and even the federal government.