by WorldTribune Staff, October 19, 2023
The state of Arkansas has ordered a Chinese state-owned company to vacate approximately 160 acres of land it owns in Craighead County.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin announced Tuesday that the land’s owner failed to report foreign ownership within the time allowed by law. Act 636 of 2023 banned nine foreign entities identified as threats to U.S. national security from owning Arkansas agricultural land, The Center Square reported.
The Craighead County land is owned by Northrup King Seed Co., a subsidiary of Syngenta Seeds, LLC, which is owned by China National Chemical Company, or ChemChina, according to Grffin’s office.
ChemChina is on the Department of Defense’s list of Chinese military companies posing a clear threat to U.S. national security, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Tuesday.
“For too long, in the name of tolerance, we’ve let these dangerous governments infiltrate our country. Arkansas will tolerate them no longer,” said Sanders. “I was proud to sign Act 636 sponsored by Sen. Johnson and Rep. Vaught banning foreign parties from nine enemy countries from owning agricultural land in Arkansas. And today we are acting on that law.”
Sanders added that Arkansas is the first state in the country to take such an action.
The Chinese-owned company was given two years to divest its land ownership in Arkansas, which has been used primarily for seed research.
“If they refuse to sell, our attorney general can move forward with legal proceedings and force them to get out of our state,” Sanders said.
Syngenta Seeds was also slapped with a civil penalty of $280,000, the highest penalty allowed, for failure to report foreign ownership in the time required by Act 1046 of 2021. The fine represents 25% of the property’s reported fair market value, valued at over $1 million, Griffin said.
Syngenta Seeds provided a statement in response to the order: “The order for Syngenta to divest itself of 160 acres of agricultural land in Craighead County, which the company has owned since 1988, is a shortsighted action that fails to account for the effects of such an action, intended or not, on the U.S. agricultural market,” from the statement, which continued: “Our people in Arkansas are Americans led by Americans who care deeply about serving Arkansas farmers. This action hurts Arkansas farmers more than anyone else.”
“For those of you who think this is some sort of outlier, you’re wrong. I’ve been in the military for almost 30 years, and I can tell you one of the most consistent themes over the last decade at least has been warnings about the Communist Chinese, what they will do and what they are doing. So this is smart and this is strategic,” Griffin said.
Grffin added: “We had congressional hearings in the late 90’s in Washington on dual-use technologies, civilian related technologies that the Chinese were obtaining from the United States. There is nothing that is off limits for them if they think that it will strengthen them strategically, whether it be related to engineering or the ability to feed their people, which is a challenge for them. We’ve had some instances in some federal prosecutions in this state that relate to seed techno log.”
According to the USDA, Chinese businesses and investors own about 380,000 acres in the U.S. Some high-profile efforts by Chinese companies to build in the U.S. have raised attention to the issue, including a failed effort by a company to build a corn mill in North Dakota that Air Force officials said was too close to their base near Grand Forks.
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