As China Buys Up Farmland Abroad, How Is Canada Responding?

Oct 17, 2025 - 09:58 Updated: Oct 17, 2025 - 02:05

As China Buys Up Farmland Abroad, How Is Canada Responding?

News Analysis

The United States has recently introduced legislation at the state and federal levels to restrict land ownership by China and other adversarial countries, but similar action is lacking in Canada, which in part explains why the United States sees its northern neighbour as a security risk, says former high-ranking RCMP officer Garry Clement.

Clement recently investigated and co-wrote a book on the Chinese regime’s aggressive infiltration of Prince Edward Island, including the Chinese regime’s buying of farmland in part via proxies. But he says that while their recent investigation focused on the PEI, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is buying farmland and property in sensitive areas Canada-wide.

“It’s going across Canada. We’re seeing the Chinese trying to get into the Arctic,” Clement, former national director for the RCMP’s Proceeds of Crime program, told The Epoch Times.

“I believe that’s part of the reason the United States has taken such a strong stance against Canada.”

Michel Juneau-Katsuya, who formerly headed the Asia-Pacific unit at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), says the CCP’s current focus may be farmland in Canada, but it’s also targeting other security-sensitive property as well.

“Currently, it’s mainly farmland. But depending on who’s coming to Canada and what intention they have, they might go for industrial lands as well,” Juneau-Katsuya told The Epoch Times.

Juneau-Katsuya is Clement’s co-author of the new book, “Canada Under Siege: How Prince Edward Island Became a Forward Operating Base for the Chinese Communist Party.”

US Crackdown

Chinese land ownership has been on the rise in the United States in recent years. Based on information available in the public domain, Chinese individuals and entities owned an estimated 69,300 acres of U.S. agricultural land in 2011, and that figure rose to more than 277,300 acres in 2023, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. While owners from other countries such as Canada and the UK may account for a higher share of foreign-owned farmland in the United States, China is among the handful of countries listed by the United States government as adversaries.

A farmer offloads corn as he harvests on his farm in Warren, Ind., on Sept. 11, 2025. Michael Conroy/AP Photo

Various U.S. legislators have expressed concern that foreign ownership of farmland, especially by companies connected to adversaries such as China, could be used for intelligence purposes or to gain leverage over the nation’s food supply. Particular concerns over intelligence gathering exist where farmland being sought by China is located close to U.S. military bases and sensitive infrastructure.

“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a threat to American democracy. The United States is engaged in a great power struggle with the CCP, and we must respond with tough policies that will protect our farmland and food supply chain,” Congressman Dan Newhouse, a Republican from the state of Washington, said in 2023, in introducing an act that aimed to ban the purchase of private or public farmland by foreign nationals with any ties to the Chinese regime.

Andrew Harding, senior associate for National Security Coalitions at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank The Heritage Foundation, says China’s foray into buying farmland in the United States represents a serious national security and food security threat.

“No foreign adversary should ever have a strategic chokehold on American agriculture that can be weaponized against the American people,” Harding told The Epoch Times.

Chinese-owned farmland is scattered across the United States, with the largest Chinese holdings in Texas, North Carolina, Missouri, Utah, and Virginia.

There have been a number of American actions against Chinese land purchases. Utah blocked a Chinese-owned company from buying state land in July, as a result of legislation passed in 2024 banning land ownership by entities deemed adversarial. Texas’s Senate Bill 17, which became law this past June, restricts Chinese, Russians, Iranians, and North Koreans from buying most kinds of real estate in the state.

Other actions include North Dakota in 2023 blocking a Chinese corn mill project located only 12 miles from a military base, and the banning of Chinese individuals from purchasing farmland in South Dakota last year. These interventions followed a variety of legislation passed in recent years by many other states to restrict Chinese purchase of farmland in their jurisdictions, such as Florida, North Carolina, Iowa, Ohio, Nebraska, and Indiana.

Young event-goers climb on farming equipment on display on the grounds of the 2025 International Plowing Match in Grassie, Ont., on Sept. 16, 2025. The Canadian Press/Sammy Kogan

U.S. President Donald Trump said in September 2024 that stopping further purchase of U.S. farmland is something his administration will support directly.

“We’re going to protect it by saying, ‘You can’t come. You can’t do it. We don’t want you buying our land. We don’t want you taking the land,’ and basically taking it off the market,” he said.

Beyond the president’s public statements, the Trump administration announced a broad strategy to limit and restrict foreign ownership of American farmland with the July 8 introduction of the National Farm Security Action Plan by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. In addition to blocking Chinese and other foreign buyers deemed to be from adversarial nations from purchasing American agricultural land, the plan also targets existing foreign-owned agricultural contracts, especially those near military sites, and calls for tougher penalties for deals that fail to disclose foreign ownership.

In parallel, Republican legislators have moved to codify these measures into law. Senator Josh Hawley and Congresswoman Mary Miller proposed the Protecting Our Farms and Homes from China Act in July, which would ban Chinese companies and individuals connected to the Chinese Communist Party from buying or leasing U.S. farmland and residential property.

The legislation also requires current foreign owners to divest within one year, and imposes both civil fines and criminal penalties for any violations, including forteiture. The bill is currently still in the introduction phase and has been referred to committee in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

“China’s goal is simple: control our food production, control our land, and weaken America from within,” Miller posted July 25 on X. “We are not going to let that happen.”

Canada’s Provincial Patchwork

Canada has federal regulations requiring major foreign takeovers to undergo security reviews, but there is no general federal regulation specifically for farmland. Unlike the rising tide of proposed bans and restrictions in the United States, including at the federal level, Canada has taken no similar action, leaving farmland regulation entirely to the provinces. And while some provinces impose strict limits on foreign ownership, others leave the door wide open.

British Columbia and Ontario have no restrictions on foreign ownership of farmland, while Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have minimal restrictions. Prince Edward Island allows foreign ownership of up to 1,000 acres for an individual and 3,000 acres for a corporation, while Alberta caps foreign citizens and foreign-controlled corporations at 20 acres of farmland and Saskatchewan caps foreign ownership at 10 acres for anyone who isn’t a Canadian citizen, permanent resident, or Canadian-owned corporation, with limited exemptions.

Manitoba caps foreign ownership at 40 acres, while Quebec requires authorization from an agricultural commission for non-resident farmland purchases. Nunavut, Yukon and the Northwest Territories have various frameworks and conditions in place to ensure land purchases align with the best interests of residents.

Clement says farmland is of particular focus to the CCP because food and water are scarce resources.

“It’s great for eventual control of food supply, and I think that’s just one of the reasons, and we’re too naive to see it,” he said. More generally, he says, the CCP is after land in Canada for better control of natural resources to the Chinese regime’s advantage, and that explains the CCP’s interests in mines and other resource deposits in Canada.

Juneau-Katsuya says that as the CCP acquires land in Canada through various means, including by using private investors as “fronts,” it gains “tremendous influence.” This is because these enterprises become major employers, and then they can pressure the government to meet their demands—for example, by threatening to close operations if their requests are not granted, he says.

“They gain access to the circle of the political decision-making,” Juneau-Katsuya says.

Then-chief of CSIS David Vigneault also commented on the issue in 2023, telling CBS about cases the intelligence service had intervened in.

“We have seen in the past, acquisition of land, acquisition of different companies ... when you start to dig a little bit further, you realize that there is another intent,” Vigneault said. “And we have seen and blocked attempts by the [People’s Republic of China] to acquire locations near sensitive, strategic assets of the country where we knew that the ultimate purpose was for spying operations.”

Vigneault made the remarks in the context of saying CSIS had blocked attempted land purchases by China in 2023, but declined to go into detail about what had been blocked.

Potato plants are seen on a farm in Clinton, P.E.I., on July 21, 2025. The Canadian Press/Giordano Ciampini

The federal government has in recent years emphasized transparency rather than hard caps on foreign farmland ownership. Ottawa’s Bill C-42, which became law in November 2023, created a federal beneficial ownership registry for federally incorporated companies, to mandate the disclosure of who in effect is the owner of the property and not just the front. Quebec and British Columbia have also amended their own provincial registries, making some beneficial ownership data public.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada says that while regulation is left to the provinces, Ottawa’s position is that farmland should not be used as an investment vehicle.

“Provinces have jurisdiction over the ownership of farmland, including land-use planning and the policies related to designation and protection of land for agricultural purposes,” Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada spokesperson Stéphanie Blais wrote in a Sept. 25 statement to The Epoch Times.

At the February 2025 annual general meeting of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA), a resolution from the BC Agriculture Council, including members of BC Young Farmers, urged Ottawa to amend the Investment Canada Act to classify farmland “as a critical resource requiring review of foreign purchases to ensure they align with Canada’s food security, sustainability and rural development goals.” The resolution, one of 18 passed at the meeting, will guide the CFA’s 2025 focus.

In February, the grassroots organization Coalition for the Protection of PEI Lands also published an open letter addressed to PEI’s then-Premier Dennis King, urging the provincial government to investigate the impact of foreign and corporate ownership on soaring land prices and shrinking farmland.

Still, there is no centralized national registry of farmland ownership broken down by nationality in Canada. This makes it nearly impossible to say with certainty how much Canadian farmland is owned by Chinese entities today.

Foreigners who want to invest in Canadian farmland usually have two main options. They can put money into a private equity fund that specializes in buying and managing Canadian farmland, which is open to certain qualified investors. Alternately, they can buy farmland directly in a province that allows non-Canadians to own agricultural land.

A farmer is seen leaving a field with a load of hay bales near Moose Creek, Ont., on Aug. 18, 2022. The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld

Cases of Chinese Farmland Purchases in Canada

Even without a national database to track Chinese ownership of Canadian farmland, a handful of high-profile purchases provide a glimpse into the scale of the matter.

In one major purchase in 2011, Chinese investors bought some 40,000 acres of Canadian farmland and bush in Quebec and Ontario, along with 18,000 more acres in early 2012.

Since then, reports of Chinese farmland ownership in Canada have been harder to confirm. Much of the land market is dominated by domestic institutional investors such as pension funds.

Local realtors and farmers often suspect that foreign money—including Chinese capital, is still finding its way into Canadian farmland through partnerships, via complex corporate structures, or by way of nominee owners. A nominee owner is someone who legally holds title to property on behalf of another party, called the beneficial owner. While the nominee appears as the official owner on paper, the beneficial owner retains the real economic interest, control, and benefits of the land.

Nominee ownership can be abused for tax evasion, money laundering, or hiding ownership of sensitive assets. For example, a Chinese company facing Canadian regulatory limits might use a trusted local nominee to hold farmland title while the company remains the beneficial owner in reality.

The Investment Canada Act and provincial agricultural land regulations oversee foreign investment in farmland and require disclosure of ultimate beneficial owners, and enforcement can include fines, forced sale, or invalidation of the transaction. Land registries and corporate structures are monitored to detect nominee arrangements intended to bypass rules, but the potential for serious abuse still exists.

Dairy cows graze in a field in Saint-Pie, Que., on July 11, 2025. The Canadian Press/Christinne Muschi

In Saskatchewan, concerns over foreign ownership of farmland led to legislative changes in 2015. Realtor Ted Cawkwell noted that in the early 2010s, there were widespread suspicions of shady and illegal farmland purchases occurring in the province, with local Canadians acting as front directors to conceal foreign investors.

To address these concerns, the Saskatchewan government amended The Saskatchewan Farm Security Act in January 2016, making pension plans, administrators of pension fund assets, and investment trusts ineligible to purchase farmland.

The province also made it clear that anything gained from owning farmland—like an increase in its value—counts as having an “interest in farmland.” Additionally, all financing for farmland purchases is required to be done through a financial institution registered to do business in Canada or a Canadian resident. These changes aimed to ensure farmland remains accessible and affordable for Saskatchewan’s farmers and ranchers.

Addressing the Risk

In January 2023, the federal government introduced a two-year ban preventing foreign nationals from buying homes in Canada, and when the measure expired, it was extended until Jan. 1, 2027, and could be renewed again, given its strong public backing, with a Research Co. poll finding that 76 percent of Canadians support restricting foreign home purchases. But this measure, limited to residential homes, was meant to cool down the housing market and keep it for Canadian residents.

However, from a national security perspective, and especially when it comes to farmland and other types of high-security properties, Canadian officials need to come up with a strategy, says Juneau-Katsuya.

Corn growing in a field in rural Prince Edward Island, Canada. meunierd/Shutterstock

“We don’t want to prevent foreign investment to come in, but there has to be a certain logic as to why we accept certain foreign entities,” Juneau-Katsuya said.

“We need to be capable to have the safeguards in place into our policy regulations and in the logic of the analysis we do when we accept a foreign entity who wants to to buy the land here.”

Clement says Canada has for decades not been taking decisive action against the CCP’s threat. He says that’s part of the reason the United States has had security concerns with Canada.

In May, FBI director Kash Patel said Canada has become a centre for CCP-backed drug smuggling networks and those from other adversarial countries collaborating with criminal organizations to traffic fentanyl into the United States. In 2019, as Canada refused to follow the model of most Five Eyes intelligence alliance nations to block China’s Huawei from its 5G network, then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened that his country would hold back intelligence sharing with any partner that kept Huawei in its critical infrastructure. Canada eventually made the decision in 2022 to ban Huawei from its 5G network on security grounds.

Clement notes that U.S. concerns about Canada will persist if places like P.E.I. that are close to the Canada-U.S. border continue to have Chinese entities present that he says can act as a “listening post.”

“We’ve allowed it to keep going, but it'll come back and bite us,” Clement said.

Clement says that in order to ensure national security for Canadians, Canada needs to get serious about the CCP’s threat, including creating more legal tools and a more focused national law enforcement capability.

“We have to move a lot quicker,” he said.

Carolina Avendano contributed to this report.