Data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) shows that foreign investors own at least 11.5 million hectares through direct ownership or long-term lease agreements, valued at approximately 52 billion dollars.
Recent research by the journalist collective Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting revealed that around 2.8 million hectares are owned by Canadian owners, followed by the Netherlands with 2.0 million hectares. German investors account for about 785,000 hectares, the United Kingdom 688,000 hectares, Italy 567,000 hectares, Portugal 559,000 hectares, and France 421,000 hectares.
The majority of American land owned by foreigners does not consist of cropland but of forests: 54.9 percent (especially many Canadian investors). Another 23.6 percent are pastures, and "only" 21.5 percent is cropland.
A former economist at the Dutch embassy in the US told an American newspaper that the large Dutch pension system certainly needs secure and conservative investments to guarantee its social security. According to those pension fund investors, the American agriculture and food industry belong to such investments.
In Ohio and several other states, German investors are among the largest landowners. A German administrator recently stated that German investors entered American agriculture in the 1980s. They started by buying land in Iowa and Minnesota. The focus then shifted to Ohio.
Previous research had already shown that foreign ownership of American farmland doubled between 2004 and 2014. In 2016 alone, foreign investors purchased at least 650,000 hectares of farmland in the United States. This was the largest increase in over ten years.
Besides land purchases, there are also major foreign investors in the American agricultural sector: in 2013, the Chinese company Shuanghui bought the large American slaughterhouse Smithfield Foods. It is now owned by the Chinese WH Group and currently holds almost 61,000 hectares of farmland in the United States. According to the USDA Economic Research Service, total Chinese investments in the American agricultural sector have increased tenfold in less than ten years.