WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is launching an aggressive, multi-agency effort to protect America’s farmlands, food supply and critical research from influence and control by US adversaries — including banning the purchase of farmland by Chinese nationals.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins joined several top officials — including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and trade adviser Peter Navarro — on Tuesday to announce the National Farm Security Action Plan.

“American agriculture is not just about feeding our families, but about protecting our nation and standing up to foreign adversaries who are buying our farmland, stealing our research, and creating dangerous vulnerabilities in the very systems that sustain us,” Rollins told reporters at USDA headquarters.

“We’re tracking and very well aware of the Michigan case, but there are others as well,” Rollins told The Post Monday after being asked about a pair of Chinese researchers accused of smuggling a crop-killing fungus into the US. AP

The secretary noted that Trump would “likely” be signing another executive order “very soon” to respond to the foreign encroachment, which would couple with federal and state legislative efforts aimed at safeguarding US agricultural research from malign foreign influence, intellectual property theft, and the growing threat of agroterrorism.

At least 700 foreign nationals in “countries of concern” like China will be swiftly kicked off of contracts and research agreements with the USDA — and further regulatory actions will remove more than 550 concerning foreign entities.

The move comes after a pair of Chinese researchers were federally charged in June after trying to smuggle a dangerous crop-killing fungus into the US, according to the FBI.

“Both of them have ties to the CCP,” Bondi said Tuesday of the romantically involved researchers at the University of Michigan. “Just days later, we arrested another Chinese citizen for sending packages of concealed biological materials into the United States.

“It’s going to stop. FBI has opened over 100 bio-smuggler investigations in recent years. We will prosecute you. We will hold you accountable.”

Rollins also said her department and other agencies will help ban the purchase of farmland by Chinese nationals — and “claw back” properties already bought.

“Too much American land is owned by nationals of adversarial countries, and more than 265,000 acres in the United States are owned by Chinese nationals, much of which is located near critical US military bases,” she had said Monday.

Rollins was joined at a press conference at USDA headquarters Tuesday by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi and trade adviser Peter Navarro. ZUMAPRESS.com / MEGA

At least 19 of those installations — from Florida to Hawaii — were close enough to allow the Chinese Communist Party to surveil US military operations via drones, radar, infra-red scanning or other tracking technologies, a Post review found.

The Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act will also be reformed to hike civil penalties for late or false filings to 25% of the fair market value of the land.

As part of the shift back toward “American-made technology, research and innovation,” the USDA will now partner with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which in 2018 received a grant proposal that laid out a “blueprint” for creating the virus causing COVID-19, according to scientists, lawmakers, public health and intelligence officials.

The grant proposal, which was never funded, “downplayed” how some of the research would be taking place at the now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“Too much American land is owned by nationals of adversarial countries, and more than 265,000 acres in the United States are owned by Chinese nationals, much of which is located near critical US military bases,” Rollins said.

Some public health experts, such as former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Robert Redfield, have since suggested that even unfunded projects can be tested under other research grants.

The USDA itself had been collaborating on “highly pathogenic” bird flu experiments with a researcher affiliated with one of the Wuhan lab’s divisions focused on special pathogens — before being exposed by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) last year.

A departmental spokesperson confirmed Tuesday that Rollins has ended the collaboration, which was receiving up to $1 million in US taxpayer funding to conduct the experiments from April 2021 to March 2026.

As part of the action plan, the USDA’s food stamp program will also be reviewed to ensure transnational criminal gangs aren’t “stealing from the poor and the American taxpayer by cloning point-of-sale devices and card skimming.”

Rollins said the US Department of Agriculture and other agencies will be banning the purchase of US farmland by Chinese nationals. Google Earth

Retailers complicit in SNAP or other benefit fraud schemes will also lose their funding. The USDA spends more than $405 million per day on the various programs.

Additionally, the USDA will begin compiling lists of supply chain items for the agriculture industry that come from foreign adversaries and propose solutions.

“’The Art of War,’ a book [by] Sun Tzu, centuries-old, says that the acme of warfare is to win without firing a shot,” Navarro told reporters Tuesday. “You fast forward to a book that was written by two high-ranking military officials in China called ‘Unrestricted Warfare.’ And you understand that we are indeed in a new world where kinetic warfare, it’s not the first choice of our rivals anymore.”

“Rather, it is things like sending us seeds or trying to steal our seeds or trying to change the seeds. It is acquiring our supply chain in agriculture. It’s setting up spy shops on land next to military bases,” the trade adviser said.

“The Chinese bought Smithfield Foods and basically control about one-eighth of the world’s pork supply now.”

The multi-agency effort, which will involve legislative and executive actions at the federal and state level, will strengthen US agricultural research. Getty Images

A Smithfield rep responded in a statement: “Smithfield Foods is a publicly traded U.S. food company listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol SFD. Our American management team is based in Smithfield, Virginia, where our company’s headquarters have been located since our founding in 1936. We employ approximately 33,000 people in the U.S. and partner with thousands of American farmers.”

The rep went on: “Our products are produced in the United States, and the vast majority are consumed in the U.S. We primarily export offal to China, cuts of the pig that are not typically consumed in the U.S.”

“We are a majority-owned subsidiary of Hong Kong-based WH Group Limited, a publicly traded company with shares listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and investors from around the world, including the United States. WH Group is not a Chinese state-owned enterprise and does not undertake any commercial activities on behalf of the Chinese government,” the spokesperson clarified.

“Today, we own approximately 85,000 acres of American farmland – less than 1/100th of one percent of all U.S. farmland – and that number continues to decline.”

Republican governors Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, Jim Pillen of Nebraska and Bill Lee of Tennessee were also in attendance.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, center, speaks with reporters as, from left, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Rep. Zachary Nunn, R-Iowa, and President Donald Trump listen as they arrive on Air Force One, Friday, July 4, 2025, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. AP

“The states have really taken the lead on this,” Rollins told reporters Monday, “I’m looking forward to working alongside our friends on the Hill [and] with the federal government to step up.”

“My hope is that this is a significant bipartisan issue that we will be able to work with some Democrat governors, some Democrat leaders across the country,” she added. “I believe that we will.

“We’re already working with some key Democrat governors on SNAP reforms … ultimately we’re all in this to protect our country.”