Republican J.D. Vance, running against Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) for Ohio’s open United States Senate seat, dropped a new ad on Thursday in which he vows to help end Chinese acquisition of American farmland.
“Why are food and groceries getting so expensive? One reason is that we let Communist China buy up American farmland — threatening our food supply and our national security,” Vance says in the ad.
“Tim Ryan and Joe Biden make this worse,” he continues.
Ryan, this year, voted to pass the Inflation Reduction Act without raising concerns about farming provisions that do nothing to protect American farmland from continuing incursions from China. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) proposed an amendment to ban China from buying American farmland but the measure was blocked by Senate Democrats.
Analysis from 2019 shows that about half a million acres of farmland in Ohio are owned by foreign investors — primarily from China, Germany, and the Netherlands.
“Ohio gave a poor kid like me a fighting chance,” Vance says. “But it won’t work for the next generation unless we protect what’s ours … I’ll stop Communist China from buying our farms. America should belong to Americans, not our enemies.”
In 2021, Chinese investors were allowed to buy $6.1 billion worth of homes and land across the U.S. Most recently, a Chinese firm bought 300 acres of farmland in North Dakota that sits just 20 minutes from a U.S. Air Force Base.
The latest U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) figure reveals that Chinese investors’ holdings of U.S. farmland skyrocketed from 13,720 acres in 2010 to 352,140 acres in 2020. Foreign investors now hold interest in more than 37 million acres of U.S. farmland — a region larger than the state of Iowa.
Vance’s ad comes as a growing GOP consensus forms around foreign investors and American billionaires buying up farmland as well as commercial and residential real estate across the U.S.
In an interview with Breitbart News, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) blasted billionaire Bill Gates’s becoming the largest private owner of American farmland, now owning nearly 250,000 acres across 19 states — including nearly 9,000 acres in Ohio.
Likewise, in August, Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) introduced legislation that would ban China from buying up American farmland. A month prior, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) called on Republicans and Democrats to ban China from buying American farmland along with U.S. real estate.
“I think the problem is these companies have ties to the [Chinese Communist Party], and it’s not always apparent on the face of whatever a company is doing — but I think it’s a huge problem,” DeSantis said at the time.
Republican Blake Masters, running to unseat Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview from July that a Republican majority in Congress must ban Chinese acquisition of American property.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.