JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The Missouri House voted Thursday to ban entities from China and four other perceived adversarial countries from purchasing land in the state, citing a need to protect farms from the possibility of falling under hostile control.
The Missouri legislation, which now heads to the Senate, is one of several similar bills moving through state capitols this year amid international tensions that were peaked by the trek of a Chinese balloon across the U.S.
“The balloon was just over this Capitol” in February, Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher said Thursday. “We have to protect Missouri sovereignty, and we have to protect Missouri farmers, and I think we need to protect our food supply.”
In addition to targeting foreign property ownership in the U.S., many states and the federal government recently banned the popular social media app TikTok from government devices amid fears its Chinese-owned parent company could provide data about users to the Chinese government.
Missouri is one of 14 states that already restrict foreign ownership of agricultural land. The new legislation would lower the cap on foreign ownership from 1% to 0.5% of all agricultural land in the state.
It also would ban the purchase of any additional land by entities from China, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela, effective Aug. 28. Of those, China is the only country currently connected to the ownership of Missouri farmland.
