Lawmakers in the North Carolina House of Representatives unanimously approved legislation on Wednesday to prevent state-controlled enterprises from China and other adversarial nations from owning land intended for agriculture or property near military bases.
The bill, entitled the North Carolina Farmland and Military Protection Act, asserts that state officials have an interest to guard farmland from "The potential of adversarial foreign government control" in order to ensure a "Safe, abundant, and affordable supply of food" for residents of the state and the nation.
"As someone who grew up on a family farm, preserving North Carolina's farmland is a top priority," North Carolina State Rep. Jennifer Balkcom, a Republican and the primary bill sponsor for the North Carolina Farmland and Military Protection Act, said in a press release.
North Carolina presently has more than 518,000 acres of farmland held by foreign entities, according to a report from the Department of Agriculture, an amount which increased by nearly 11,000 acres between 2019 and 2020.
Lawmakers in South Dakota, who also moved last year to prevent Chinese entities from purchasing land in the state, are particularly concerned about the acquisition of farmland near Ellsworth Air Force Base.
The North Carolina Farmland and Military Protection Act mentioned military facilities such as Fort Bragg, Camp Lejeune, and Seymour Johnson Air Force Base as locations where entities controlled by adversarial nations cannot purchase property.
The move from North Carolina lawmakers comes as tensions between the United States and China worsen over several recent espionage efforts from the communist nation, including a spy balloon that traversed the continental United States and reports of social media platform TikTok collecting data on American citizens.
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