{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-tuberville-introduce-bill-to-prohibit-the-chinese-communist-party-from-purchasing-american-land", "Cotton, Tuberville Introduce Bill to Prohibit the Chinese Communist Party from Purchasing American Land", "2022-08-02", "2022", "2022-08", "Republican", "Senate", "AR", "Tom Cotton", "C001095", "www.cotton.senate.gov", "cotton", "https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases", "scraper", "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEContact: James Arnold or Mary Collins Atkinson (202) 224-2353\n\nAugust 2, 2022\n\nCotton, Tuberville Introduce Bill to Prohibit the Chinese Communist Party from Purchasing American Land\n\nWashington, D.C. \u2014 Senators Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) today introduced the Securing America\u2019s Land from Foreign Interference Act to prohibit members of the Chinese Communist Party from purchasing any land in the United States. Text of the bill may be found here.\n\n\u201cChinese investments in American farmland put our food security at risk and provide opportunities for Chinese espionage against our military bases and critical infrastructure. Instead of allowing these purchases, the U.S. government must bar the Communist Party from purchasing our land,\u201d said Cotton.\n\n\u201cWe cannot continue giving our top adversary a foot in the door to purchase land in the United States and undermine our national security,\u201d said Tuberville. \u201cI hope my colleagues will recognize the importance of our bill and join the effort to prohibit Chinese Communist Party involvement in America\u2019s agriculture industry.\u201d\n\nBackground:\n\n\u2022 China\u2019s agricultural investments in countries around the globe grew more than tenfold from 2009 to 2016. China\u2019s Ministry of Agriculture claims the country had over 1,300 agricultural, forestry, and fisheries enterprises with registered overseas investments of $26 billion, at the end of 2016.\n\n\u2022 Chinese investments in U.S. agricultural may provide the CCP with undue leverage over U.S. supply chains and access to sensitive information critical to U.S. national security.\n\n\u2022 While Chinese entities held slightly less than one percent of all foreign-held acres in the U.S. in 2020, the volume of their holdings increased dramatically over the last decade. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports, Chinese investors\u2019 holdings of U.S. agricultural land surged from 13,720 acres in 2010 to 352,140 acres in 2020.\n\n\u2022 The USDA\u2019s most recent report on foreign landholding through December 31, 2020 shows foreign investors now hold an interest in nearly 37.6 million acres of agricultural land in the U.S.\u2014an area larger than the state of Iowa.\n\n\u2022 Approximately 14 states have some level of foreign ownership restriction yet there are no federal restrictions on the amount of private U.S. agricultural land that can be foreign owned.\n\n\u2022 Land grabbing by foreign actors will become a greater threat in the coming years. With an aging population of American farmers (one-third over the age of 65), millions of acres in U.S. farmland are expected to change hands in the next decade.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T02:59:24Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-tuberville-introduce-bill-to-prohibit-the-chinese-communist-party-from-purchasing-american-land"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.615207875147462, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}