WASHINGTON \u2014 The Trump administration is launching an aggressive, multi-agency effort to protect America\u2019s farmlands, food supply and critical research from\u00a0influence and control by US adversaries\u00a0\u2014 including banning the purchase of farmland by Chinese nationals.<\/p>\n
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins joined several\u00a0top\u00a0officials \u2014 including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and trade adviser Peter Navarro \u2014 on Tuesday to announce the National Farm Security Action Plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmerican 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,\u201d Rollins\u00a0told reporters at USDA headquarters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re tracking and very well aware of the Michigan case, but there are others as well,\u201d 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<\/p>\n
The secretary noted that Trump would \u201clikely\u201d be signing another executive order \u201cvery soon\u201d to respond to the foreign encroachment, which would couple with federal and state legislative efforts aimed at safeguarding US agricultural research\u00a0from malign foreign influence, intellectual property theft, and the growing threat of agroterrorism.<\/p>\n
At least 700 foreign nationals in \u201ccountries of concern\u201d like China will\u00a0be swiftly\u00a0kicked off of contracts and research agreements with the USDA \u2014 and further regulatory actions will remove more than 550 concerning foreign entities.<\/p>\n
The move comes after a pair of Chinese researchers were federally charged in June after trying to\u00a0smuggle a dangerous crop-killing fungus<\/a>\u00a0into the US, according to the FBI.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth of them have ties to the CCP,\u201d Bondi\u00a0said Tuesday of the romantically involved researchers at the University of Michigan. \u201cJust days later, we arrested another Chinese citizen for sending packages of concealed biological materials into the United States.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to stop. FBI has opened over 100 bio-smuggler investigations in recent years. We will prosecute you. We will hold you accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n Rollins\u00a0also\u00a0said her department and other agencies will\u00a0help ban the purchase of farmland by Chinese nationals \u2014 and \u201cclaw back\u201d properties already bought.<\/p>\n \u201cToo 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\u00a0located near critical US military bases<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0she\u00a0had said\u00a0Monday.<\/p>\n 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<\/p>\n At least 19 of those installations \u2014\u00a0from Florida to Hawaii \u2014\u00a0were close enough to allow the Chinese Communist Party to surveil US military operations via drones, radar, infra-red scanning or other tracking technologies,\u00a0a Post review found<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n As part of the shift back toward\u00a0\u201cAmerican-made technology, research and innovation,\u201d the USDA will now partner with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which in 2018\u00a0received a grant proposal that laid out a \u201cblueprint\u201d<\/a>\u00a0for creating the virus causing COVID-19,\u00a0according to scientists<\/a>,\u00a0lawmakers<\/a>,\u00a0public health<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0intelligence officials<\/a>.<\/p>\n The grant proposal, which was never funded,\u00a0\u201cdownplayed\u201d how some of the research<\/a>\u00a0would be taking place at the now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology.<\/p>\n \u201cToo 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,\u201d Rollins said.<\/p>\n Some public health experts, such as former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Robert Redfield,\u00a0have since\u00a0suggested<\/a>\u00a0that even unfunded projects can be tested under other research grants.<\/p>\n The USDA itself had been collaborating on \u201chighly pathogenic\u201d bird flu experiments with a researcher affiliated with one of the Wuhan lab\u2019s divisions focused on special pathogens \u2014 before being\u00a0exposed by Sen. Joni Ernst<\/a>\u00a0(R-Iowa) last year.<\/p>\n A departmental spokesperson confirmed Tuesday that Rollins has\u00a0ended\u00a0the collaboration<\/a>, which was\u00a0receiving up to $1 million in US taxpayer funding<\/a>\u00a0to conduct the experiments from April 2021 to March 2026.<\/p>\n As part of the action plan, the USDA\u2019s food stamp program will also be reviewed to ensure transnational criminal gangs aren\u2019t \u201cstealing from the poor and the American taxpayer by cloning point-of-sale devices and card skimming.\u201d<\/p>\n Rollins said the US Department of Agriculture and other agencies will be banning the purchase of US farmland by Chinese nationals. Google Earth<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Additionally, the USDA will begin compiling lists of supply chain items for the agriculture industry that come from foreign adversaries and propose solutions.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2019The Art of War,\u2019 a book [by] Sun Tzu, centuries-old, says that the acme of warfare is to win without firing a shot,\u201d\u00a0Navarro told reporters Tuesday. \u201cYou fast forward to a book that was written by two high-ranking military officials in China called \u2018Unrestricted Warfare.\u2019 And you understand that we are indeed in a new world where kinetic warfare, it\u2019s not the first choice of our rivals anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRather, 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\u2019s setting up spy shops on land next to military bases,\u201d the trade adviser said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Chinese bought Smithfield Foods and basically control about one-eighth of the world\u2019s pork supply now.\u201d<\/p>\n The multi-agency effort, which will involve legislative and executive actions at the federal and state level, will strengthen US agricultural research. Getty Images<\/p>\n A Smithfield rep responded in a statement: \u201cSmithfield 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\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n The rep went on: \u201cOur 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.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe 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,\u201d the spokesperson clarified.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, we own approximately 85,000 acres of American farmland \u2013 less than 1\/100th of one percent of all U.S. farmland \u2013 and that number continues to decline.\u201d<\/p>\n Republican governors Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, Jim Pillen of Nebraska and Bill Lee of Tennessee were also in attendance.<\/p>\n 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<\/p>\n \u201cThe states have really taken the lead on this,\u201d Rollins\u00a0told reporters\u00a0Monday, \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to working alongside our friends on the Hill [and] with the federal government to step up.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy 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,\u201d she added. \u201cI believe that we will.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re already working with some key Democrat governors on SNAP reforms \u2026 ultimately we\u2019re all in this to protect our country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 The Trump administration is launching an aggressive, multi-agency effort to protect America\u2019s farmlands, food supply and…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":49927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,74,7824,37160,37806,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,80,5343,67,586,132,5230,68,1154,2969,7168],"class_list":{"0":"post-49926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-china","10":"tag-coronavirus","11":"tag-farms","12":"tag-labs","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkcity","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-politics","20":"tag-terrorism","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-us-news","27":"tag-usa","28":"tag-usda"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114820200953287886","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}