Spatial patterns of foreign agricultural land holdings near U.S. military interest points.

Abstract

Foreign holdings of U.S. farmland have received increased regulatory and public attention amid concerns about national security risks, particularly when adversary-linked acquisitions occur near military installations. Most existing research focuses on the volume rather than the spatial distribution of these holdings. Using social media listening, we document a sharp rise in public discussion of foreign agricultural land holdings since 2020, coinciding with the post-2022 wave of state-level legislation. We then assess the spatial relationship between foreign land transactions and U.S. Military Interest Points (MIPs) using transaction-level data from the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act covering 1996-2024. People's Republic of China (PRC)-linked transactions excluding the 2013 Smithfield acquisition occur in MIP counties at 43.7%, compared with approximately 11% for non-adversary foreign and unidentified-origin transactions. Linear probability and probit specifications with state and acquisition-year fixed effects estimate that MIP presence is associated with a 0.47 percentage-point to 0.75 percentage point higher probability that a transaction is PRC- linked, while non-adversary foreign transactions show no MIP association. Descriptive evidence suggests that PRC-linked transactions shifted from MIP counties toward MIP-adjacent counties after 2022, while the share of transactions reported under unidentified-origin codes rose in both MIP and MIP-adjacent counties, though small post-2022 sample sizes preclude statistical inference. Our findings are associational rather than causal and inform ongoing policy discussions about foreign agricultural land ownership.