A “farmland buying spree” by Wall Street hedge funds and China is turning American farms into “corporate fiefdoms,” Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says.
In 2021, as Breitbart News reported, Chinese investors bought up $6.1 billion worth of United States housing, real estate, and land. Kennedy, in a Twitter post, criticized the federal government’s allowing hedge funds and foreign countries like China to buy up American land.
“Farmland buying spree by Wall Street’s mammoth hedge funds and China are turning America’s and the globe’s agricultural landscapes into corporate fiefdoms and farmers into serfs,” Kennedy wrote. “Many people do not understand that small farms actually outproduce large industrial farms.”
The Center for Research on Globalization report posted by Kennedy details how a small group of corporate behemoths dominate the nation’s food industry and, thus, have a stake in who controls American farmland.
Likewise, China, according to a 2021 USDA report, owns nearly 384,000 acres of American farmland –195,000 acres of which were purchased by Chinese investors and the other 189,000 acres of which were purchased by U.S. corporations with Chinese shareholders.
From 2019 to 2020 alone, China bought up 105,000 acres of American farmland. Then, in 2021, China purchased another 32,000 acres of land across the United States.
Like China, American billionaires are buying up America’s farmland and real estate at historic levels — driving up real estate prices for working- and middle-class communities. Today, billionaire Bill Gates owns almost 250,000 acres of American farmland, making him the largest private owner of agricultural land in the nation.
Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Katie Britt (R-AL) filed legislation months ago that would ban Chinese nationals and Chinese companies from buying and owning real estate in the United States. The legislation, and its nearly identical bill in the House, does not have any Democrat co-sponsors.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.