Lankford Rallies Support for His Bill to Stop China from Buying Up Ag Land in Oklahoma

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks before the Agriculture Committee on YouTube.

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks before the Agriculture Committee on Rumble.

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks before the Intelligence Committee on YouTube.

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks before the Intelligence Committee on Rumble.

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) provided opening remarks in support of his bill, the Security and Oversight of International Landholdings (SOIL) Act at the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee hearing entitled, “Foreign Ownership in U.S. Agriculture.” Lankford also rallied support for his SOIL Act during a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on which he serves.

Lankford is leading the way in the Senate to address our ongoing dependence on China for everything from farmland purchases to pharmaceuticals to critical minerals and to warn leaders in the US and around the world about the national security threats we face from Chinese aggression and from Chinese criminal entities.

Lankford recently rallied support for his Deterring Escalation Through Economic Retaliation (DETER) Act, which would deter conflict in the Taiwan Strait by establishing a policy to revoke Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with the People’s Republic of China if Beijing invades Taiwan. Lankford led the introduction of the Belt & Road Oversight Act to strengthen America’s ability to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s economic coercion and predatory lending tactics. Lankford led the bipartisan Quad Critical Minerals Partnership Act and recently introduced new legislation to reduce the US’ reliance on China for critical minerals. Lankford continues to call out the Biden Administration’s soft approach to China and encourages the Administration to directly address with China their human rights and religious freedom abuses.

Excerpt

Lankford: Obviously I come from Oklahoma, which is a state with 4 million people. Literally, 2 million of them live in urban areas and 2 million of them live in rural areas. Like many of you as well, we have this great distribution in our state. So I had been interested in this in an ancillary way in many ways—until 2018. In 2018, my state passed a medical marijuana law. Now it was the most liberal medical marijuana bill in the nation at the time, and what we saw was a rush to be able to buy up farm land in our state. And it was a shift that surprised a lot of people in the state based on how quickly it happened and based on who actually did it.

Oklahoma is now number eight in the nation for having land owned by foreign entities in our state since 2018 when we passed that. In fact, the year after we passed a medical marijuana law in our state, the next year, Oklahoma had more land sales to foreign entities than any other state in the nation.

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