News
Foreign owners bought a little more U.S. land last year
USDA says foreign ownership of U.S. land increased a little last year. In a report entitled “Foreign Holdings of U.S. Agricultural Land”, the ag department says though February, 2008, foreign persons held 20.9 million acres of U.S. land, 1.6 percent of all agricultural land in the country.
Of the foreign-owned land, 13 percent is cropland, 58 percent is forest land and 26 percent is pasture or other agricultural land.
Foreign holdings were relatively steady from 1997 through 2006; then there was a 3.6 million acre increase in 2007 followed by another 1.7 million acre increase last year. Most of the purchases have been large tracts of timber land.
Canadians own the most, 7.3 million acres, citizens of the Netherlands own 3.9 million, United Kingdom1.5 million and Germans own 1.4 million acres.
The state with the most foreign-owned land…Maine, 3.35 million acres which is 18.7 percent of all the agricultural land in the state. Almost all of the foreign-owned agricultural land in Maine is forest land.
Texas has the second-largest amount of foreign-owned land, 2.1 million acres while Hawaii has the second-highest percentage of foreign-owned ag land, 8.8 percent, mostly pasture land. Washington and Oregon saw a substantial increase in the amount of foreign-owned forest land moving from 1.1 million to 1.8 million combined acres in the two states.
Less than 1 percent of the farmland in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Minnesota and Kansas is held by foreign owners. Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota are under 2/10ths of one percent of foreign ownership. Michigan is the only state in the Midwest above 2 percent with 3.2% of agricultural land foreign-owned. Except for Maine and Michigan, most of the states with ownership above 3 percent are in the Southeast and the West.
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i do not understand the problem, if you cannot handle the truth then don’t dont ask the question.
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you say speak your mind i did based on the article .
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Hmmm….Grown by China in the former United States Of America. Comrade Tom Vilsack says this is a good way for farmers to help support the party…and in the next election the farmers can vote for Tom Vilsack or Tom Vilsack…because he wants to make sure the farmers know they have a choice…
i donot understand why our state government and federal government allows land of the united states to be sold to a outside government or a outside person.
go to their countries and try to by land or a building and see what you are told. i wish to heck that folks would pay attention to what is being said and use common cense .