LINCOLN- According to an annual federal report on "foreign holdings" in Nebraska, around 791,000 acres of urban and rural, industrial and agricultural land was owned by foreign entities in 2022. To put that number into perspective, that's around twice the size of Omaha, Nebraska's largest city. To address that staggering number, Sen. Steve Halloran introduced an interim study, which will be held on September 15th, to touch on the issues of food security, U.S. sovereignty, and growing anxiety about the reach and influence of China.

"We're just trying to get a little more clarity on the issue," said Halloran, "to see how much foreign ownership there really is. The more clarity, the better." The topic of foreign ownership of Nebraska's land seems to be a hot-button issue for a slew of local legislators, as twenty-eight of the Unicameral's 49 representatives signed on to the study. The text of the interim study cites the federal data directly, and suggests that foreign ownership of land has increased 10-fold over the past ten years, from about 34,000 acres in 2010 to 690,000 in 2020.

Halloran said that his reason for introducing such a study was the recent 300-acre land purchase made by a Chinese-owned corn processing company near a military base in North Dakota last year. "I think most all Nebraskans would have some level of anxiety if it got out of hand," said the Senator. John Hansen, of the Nebraska Farmers Union, agrees with the intent of the study, saying that local farmers don't like "big anything" coming and out-competing with Nebraskans for crucial farmland. More detailed data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, however, indicates that a substantial portion of foreign holdings relate to wind farms, and only one occurrence of land purchasing in Nebraska was actually related in any way to China.

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