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Arkansas is first state to enforce a new FALO law

The State of Arkansas is enforcing a new ag land ownership law that will require Syngenta to sell the land it owns in the state within the next two years or go to court.

Northrup King Seed Company, a subsidiary of Syngenta, owns a seed research facility on 160 acres of land in northeast Arkansas. Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders says ChemChina, the company that owns Syngenta, is on the Department of Defense’s list of Chinese military companies that pose a clear threat to the state and she says the stolen seed technology tells enemies how to target American farms.

In addition to divesting the farmland, Syngenta was also fined $280,000 for failing to report foreign ag ownership to the state in a timely manner.

In a statement, Syngenta says the company has updated its Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act filing, reflecting the change in its ultimate ownership and filed a copy with the state of Arkansas.

The company also says the short-sighted action in Arkansas fails to account for the effects of such an action, intended or not, on the U.S. agricultural market.

Attorney Micah Brown with the National Ag Law Center closely monitors foreign ag land ownership laws across the country. He tells Brownfield the new law went into effect last month.

“Of the states that enacted new legislation this year, Arkansas is the first to enforce something.”

Brown says the Arkansas law is vague on how a foreign owned party must divest of the land, but a public land sale is possible. He says it’s unclear if any other foreign ag-owned companies in the state will be affected, but the new law is likely to affect private landowners.

“A restriction like this might reduce the pool of purchasers from a farmer.”

Arkansas is one of 24 states that has a foreign ag land ownership law and Brown says all of them are written differently and enforcement might look different in other states. For example, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, South Dakota and Wisconsin exempt research facilities from their foreign ag land ownership laws.

He says it will be interesting to see how the 12 states that updated or passed new foreign ag land ownership laws this year enforce them including Ohio, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Tennessee.