Americans have been worried for decades about foreigners buying U.S. farmland.

A front-page story in the Dec. 15, 1974, Gazette under a banner headline “Europeans buying Iowa land” voiced concerns about investors from Italy, Canada, Japan and Germany buying up Eastern Iowa farmland without being required to report the purchases to the U.S. government.

“Foreign land buyers in Iowa are taking advantage of these provisions to hide their identities,” the article states.

Since that time, Congress and the Iowa Legislature have passed laws requiring foreign people and companies to report U.S. agricultural land purchases. Iowa now has the strictest law in the nation to limit foreigners buying farmland, according to the Farm Service Agency, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Still, there are fears about China — a major trade partner also viewed as a critical threat — buying farmland near U.S. military bases and owning Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer with nine facilities in Iowa as well as 521 contract farms and three feed mills.

Iowa has 512,383 acres of foreign-owned or leased land, according to the most USDA data.

Foreign investment in Iowa farmland more than doubled in the last 10 years, but Iowa still ranks in the bottom half of states for acres with foreign investment. Iowa’s foreign acres are less than 2 percent of privately-owned agricultural land.

“Iowa, as it stood pre-2023, likely had the strongest law to restrict foreign ownership,” said Micah Brown, staff attorney and an expert on foreign land ownership for the National Agricultural Law Center, based at the University of Arkansas and partially funded by the USDA. “People from different sides of the political aisle are looking at Iowa’s law as a standard.”

Twelve states this year passed or tightened laws to restrict foreign land ownership, particularly from countries viewed as U.S. adversaries, the center reported.

But nearly a half century after that 1974 Gazette article, it’s still hard for Iowans to figure out who owns Iowa farmland.

The Gazette analyzed reports filed with the USDA through the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act, which requires people and firms to report farmland ownership or leases of at least 10 acres or land that produces at least $1,000 in gross receipts each year. The newspaper found historical records and talked with Iowa farmers to learn more about foreign people and companies who own farmland.

Here’s what The Gazette found:

Most foreign investment in Iowa land is for wind

More than 90 percent of Iowa’s agricultural land with foreign investment is in long-term leases for wind projects. Federal law requires multinational firms with a majority interest in another country to disclose investment in ag land. Foreign investors — firms or individuals — must report leases of 10 years or more.

Nationally, about 30 percent of foreign land investment is in leases.

Dickinson County had the largest number of acres of ag land in Iowa with foreign investment — 50,216 acres as of Dec. 31, 2021. All of those acres were leased for three wind projects, but the largest, the Red Rock Energy Center, a 79-turbine development near East Lake Okoboji, was denied a permit in October, Iowa Public Radio reported.

Invenergy, a multinational energy company with headquarters in Chicago, proposed the Red Rock project. The company has major investors in Canada and Italy, which are the countries linked to the Dickinson County leases disclosed in the federal report.

More than 34,000 acres — or more than 10 percent of Washington County’s farm acres — are in long-term leases for another Invenergy wind project that never happened.

In 2020, Invenergy was developing the Long Creek Wind Project, which would have crossed 6 or 7 miles in the center of Washington County, according to KCII Radio. Supervisors were developing an ordinance on special tax valuation of wind turbines when they learned Invenergy was pulling out.

“Right before we were voting on the ordinance, they called in and said they were not going to build that wind farm,” Washington County Supervisor Richard Young said last month. “They were having trouble trying to get on the grid.”

Invenergy’s leases with Washington County landowners did not require payments unless the project was built, said Kent Dallmeyer, who signed a lease back in the late 2000s. His son now owns the land where the lease is in effect, he said.

Sometimes, wind developers will seek leases for more land than they will use for a wind or solar project as a way to keep other developers out, said Brown, the attorney for the National Agricultural Law Center. “Even if they know they won’t develop it, it prevents someone else from developing it,” he said.

Chinese investment limited

The Fufeng Group, a Chinese company, last year bought 300 acres of North Dakota farmland to build a grain milling plant. The plan raised alarm bells — and was ultimately derailed — because the land was 12 miles from the Grand Forks Air Force Base, a hub for U.S. military drone technology, NBC News reported.

A Chinese billionaire, through subsidiaries he owns, purchased 140,000 acres of agricultural land in Texas, including some parcels near Laughlin Air Force Base, Forbes reported in 2021.

Chinese investment in U.S. land has spurred tighter laws and has been the subject of political ads in the Republican presidential race.

Iowa’s primary foreign land ownership law, Chapter 9I.3, says a “non-resident alien, foreign business or foreign government … shall not purchase or otherwise acquire agricultural land in this state.” Foreign people or firms who owned Iowa farmland before Jan. 1, 1980, were allowed to keep it, but prohibited from buying more.

There are some exceptions to Iowa’s law, including farmland used for “testing, developing or producing seeds or plants for sale or resale to farmers” and land used for research or experimentation, not profits.

China holds fewer than 400,000 acres of agricultural land nationwide, which is slightly less than 1 percent of foreign-held acres, according to the 2021 report.

The federal database lists no Chinese investors in Iowa.

However, Syngenta Seeds, which has been Chinese-owned since 2017, owns 562 acres in Boone County. These two parcels were purchased in 2005 and 2017, following Syngenta’s purchase of Iowa firm Garst Seeds in 2004.

In the 2021 federal disclosure of foreign-owned land, Syngenta listed its ownership as Swiss, although the company was purchased by ChemChina, a Chinese government-owned corporation.

Arkansas in October ordered Syngenta to sell 160 acres within two years under a new state law that prohibits some foreign countries from acquiring or holding land, Rueters reported. The state also fined Syngenta $280,000 for failure to report foreign ownership in a timely manner.

Iowa has no land owned or leased by investors from Russia or North Korea, according to the federal database. The records show an Iranian man has owned 457 acres of agricultural land in Ringgold County since 1979, but the Ringgold County Assessor’s Office says it has no record of this ownership.

Earlier this year, Iowa lawmakers considered but did not pass a bill that would allow foreign investors from “allied” countries to buy up to 1,000 acres of agricultural land — up from 320 acres now — to build a factory or other approved industrial use.

German family largest foreign land owner in Linn County

Linn County has 1,783 acres of foreign-owned farmland, with more than 60 percent of it owned by one German family.

Jay Carson, 69, started renting land from the Sels family in 1987.

“Othon was the dad. Sigrid was the mom,” Carson said. “They had a soybean processing plant in Neuss, Germany.“

The Sels started buying Iowa farmland in the early 1970s — before Iowa’s law restricting foreign ownership — and at one time owned thousands of acres in Linn and Van Buren counties.

“He bought this land during the Cold War,” Carson said of Othon Sels in a 1997 Gazette article. As a German prisoner of war in Russia during World War II, Sels “wanted part of his money out of Germany. If the Russians came to Germany, he wanted a place to go.”

Over the years, the Sels used a portion of Carson’s rent payments to improve the land, with tiling and other projects, Carson said. When the Germans decided to sell some land, they did so gradually so Carson and his sons could buy it.

“This was big load for me to take on at that time,” Carson said. “They wanted me to have the farm. They were very, very good to me.”

Although the family sold some land, it still owns 1,136 acres and leases another 117, the federal database shows.

PMX Industries, a South Korean supplier of copper and copper alloys, owns about 320 acres of farmland around its plant at 5300 Willow Creek Drive SW, in Cedar Rapids.

Northern Trust Co., whose majority owner is from Liechtenstein, owns 224 acres south of 16th Avenue SW and west of Stoney Point Road SW in Cedar Rapids. Those parcels were purchased in 1975. The company filed with the Secretary of State as a farm corporation, but lists no address, officers or registered agent.

Transparency needed

Under Iowa Code Chapter 10B, foreign landowners are required to file a report with the Iowa Secretary of State in odd years saying the owner’s citizenship, how many acres are owned or leased, in which counties the land is located and, if a “life science enterprise,” the total amount of commercial sale of products from the land.

Those reports are confidential.

Secretary of State Paul Pate’s Office is required to notify the Attorney General if it believes any violations of Iowa’s foreign land ownership laws have occurred, including late filings. The attorney general can levy fines of up to $1,000 plus $100 a day for late filing.

Eric Gookin, general counsel for the office, said they received “several hundred” electronic filings in the last cycle.

“Once they complete that process, we review to ensure it is complete as described in chapter 10B,” he said. The Secretary of State’s office has forwarded violations to the Attorney General in the last five years, Gookin said, but the AG’s office has not issued any civil penalties.

Iowa’s system for reporting land transactions allows investors to shield their identities with shell companies and limited liability companies, The Gazette reported in June.

“If you ask most people, they’d be interested in transparency,” state Rep. J.D. Scholten, D-Sioux City, said in a recent interview. “The way the system is now, whether it’s intentional or not, it’s really hard to try to find out who bought the land down the road. Is it a Wall Street firm? Or is it Uncle Bob down the road? Or was it Bill Gates?”

Agricultural land experts predict in the next 20 years, as baby boomers retire and die, Iowa will undergo the biggest land transfer since the Louisiana Purchase, Scholten said.

“What we don’t want is private equity or foreign ownership to buy all the land and make us serfs on our own land,” he said. Scholten said he plans to introduce state legislation next year that would require more transparency of agricultural land transactions.

There have been several proposals in Congress to shed light on foreign land buys.

U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, and Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, earlier this year introduced the Farmland Security Act of 2023, which would require disclosure of foreign land investors through shell companies, strengthen penalties for people who evade filing and pay for research into the impact foreign investment has on the American food supply and rural communities.

John McGlothlen of The Gazette and Diane Fannon-Langton, a Gazette correspondent, contributed to this report.

Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com