China ownership raises US food fears

Washington: US Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins warned Congress that Chinese ownership, foreign dependence and corporate consolidation had created national-security vulnerabilities across the US food system.

Rollins said America had weakened its farms and rural communities by moving food production overseas and allowing control of agricultural processing, fertiliser and seed production to become concentrated among a small number of businesses.

“As long as we are beholden to foreign and even hostile countries for our food and our fuel, our freedom is in jeopardy,” she told the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Rollins said nearly 85 per cent of US meat-packing capacity was controlled by four companies, two of which were foreign-owned. She also drew attention to Chinese ownership in the pork sector.

“Additionally, our largest pork company in America is owned by a China company, or China,” she said.

Four fertiliser companies now represented 78 per cent of US production, compared with dozens of businesses several decades ago, Rollins said. Two seed companies produced more than half of the seed used in the country.

“These are national security implications,” she said.

Rollins was testifying in support of President Donald Trump’s $87.6 billion supplemental funding request, which combines military, agricultural, humanitarian and other spending.

The agricultural portion seeks $10 billion in temporary assistance for row-crop and speciality-crop producers. It includes a further $1.1 billion for producers affected by severe freezes during the previous winter.

Rollins said the proposed assistance would provide farmers with short-term support while the administration worked to rebuild domestic agricultural production and reduce dependence on overseas supply chains.

“For the sake of American national security, American existence, and the American future, we must in the long run end this system that has grown up like a weed and strangled the American farmland and food production,” she said.

The agriculture secretary said the United States became a significant net importer of food for the first time in 2023. The country later recorded an agricultural trade deficit of $50 billion, which she blamed in part on the absence of new trade agreements before Trump returned to office.

She said the administration had since secured 19 trade agreements and reduced the agricultural trade deficit by 42 per cent in one year. Corn exports were expected to reach record levels, while exports of ethanol, dairy products and tree nuts were also rising.

Republican Senator Mike Rounds supported linking food security with national security. He said foreign adversaries, cyberthreats, industry consolidation and unfair trade practices affected the ability of farmers to produce food, fuel and fibre scrutiny in the United States.

China is a major participant in global agricultural trade and an important market for commodities including soybeans, grains and meat. Agricultural trade has also been a recurring point of friction in the broader economic relationship between Washington and Beijing.

IANS