Schmick bill would prohibit foreign adversaries from owning Washington state agriculture land
CONTACT: Brendon Wold, Deputy Communications Director | 360-786-7698
Schmick bill would prohibit foreign adversaries from owning Washington state agriculture land
Legislation introduced in the Washington State House of Representatives would prohibit foreign adversaries from owning Washington state agriculture lands.
House Bill 1999, sponsored by Rep. Joe Schmick, R-Colfax, seeks to protect current and future agriculture land, making sure such land is available for local production and use and not by those who have proven to be foreign adversaries.
“It’s been said before, but ‘Food security is national security.’ In our state, we have a significant amount of our agriculture land owned by foreign entities. A report by the Iowa Farm Bureau in 2022 showed that of Washington state’s 22 million acres of agriculture land, foreign ownership accounted for about 1.6 million acres,” said Schmick, a former second-generation farmer and small business owner. “We need to make sure those entities are not labeled as national adversaries that usually do not have our best interest in mind.”
Depending on the various definitions of ‘agriculture land’ by different states, Maine and Hawaii typically lead the nation in the percentage of land owned by foreign entities. Washington is usually in the top ten. However, Schmick’s bill does not apply to all foreign ownership; it applies only to those deemed ‘foreign adversaries’ by the United States Secretary of Commerce.
“It’s one thing for foreigners to own land in our state, and perhaps that issue and debate is for another time. But of those foreign owners, we need to prevent those specifically labeled ‘foreign adversaries’ from owning our agriculture land,” said Schmick. “I’m also concerned about those foreign entities that come in with a blank check and artificially drive up prices of agriculture land.”
Nearly half the states have some sort of restriction on foreign entities owning state land, with only a handful specifically calling out foreign adversaries.
Schmick’s bill is cosponsored by Rep. Tom Dent, R-Moses Lake, the ranking Republican on the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, where the bill currently resides.
Schmick’s bill also directs the state Department of Agriculture to do an annual report of agriculture land owned by foreign entities, the percentage of change in foreign ownership over the last 10 years, and the purpose for which the land is being used. The report must be done on a county-by-county and statewide basis.
The bill would go into effect on July 1, 2025.
The 2025 legislative session ends April 27.
