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

Valerie Kilders, Anam Ali, Austin Berenda, Michael Smith, Nicole Olynk Widmar and Ronald F Turco

PLOS ONE, 2026, vol. 21, issue 8, 1-16

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.

Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0355827

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0355827

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