The Chinese Land Scare

Forty percent of Fairfax Va. residents aged five and older speak a language other than English at home, per the May strategic plan update.

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WOD

Erewhonian
MEANING:
adjective:
1. Opposed to machines, automation, or technology, like a Luddite.
2. Treating disease as crime and ill people as criminals.

ETYMOLOGY:
After Erewhon, a place described in the satirical novel Erewhon (1872) by Samuel Butler. Earliest documented use: 1897.

NOTES:
In Erewhon, criminals are treated as sick and sick people as criminals. Also, Erewhonians consider machines as dangerous and avoid them. The name Erewhon is an anagram of nowhere.

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All clownfish are born male but can change their sex to female in order to become a dominant member of their school. If you've seen Finding Nemo, then you probably know that clownfish live in an anemone. A close relative of coral and jellyfish, anemones are stinging polyps that spend most of their time attached to rocks on the sea bottom or on coral reefs. Within that, there is one "breeding pair" that lives among other non-breeding fish. When the female from the breeding pair dies, one of the male fish becomes female. This is known as sequential hermaphroditism and is an irreversible change. (This information should not be shared with weak-minded social activists.)

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The Chinese Land Scare

While the amount of U.S. agricultural land owned by foreigners doubled between 2009–2019, the latest federal government data (for 2021) show that these parcels still account for just 3.1 percent of all private farmland in the United States. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines foreign ownership as both land owned solely by foreigners, as well as land jointly owned by American and foreign investors.

Of this sliver of private U.S. agricultural land, moreover, Chinese entities remain a tiny player. Chinese entities own less than 1 percent of all foreign-owned farmland, while most of the land is owned by companies and individuals located in nations closely allied with the United States, such as Canada (30 percent), the Netherlands (12 percent), Italy (6 percent), the U.K. (6 percent), and Germany (6 percent). Including Hong Kong in China’s totals doesn’t much change these results – it’s still just 1.2 percent of all foreign-owned farmland. As Tori Smith of the American Action Forum notes, China ranks tenth among foreign nations in the value of their U.S. farmland, behind Japan and Sweden, and well behind Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany.--Lincicome

So, where has all this concern about Chinese buying farmland come from?