“We have to get the Secretary of Agriculture on CFIUS to protect our farmland. If we don’t do it, we’re going to continue to lose at the end of the day.”
WASHINGTON – Today,U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) joined U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins and Department of Defense (DoD) Secretary Pete Hegseth and other government officials in a press conference announcing the Trump administration’s National Farm Security Plan.
During the event, Secretary Rollins announced that as of today, the Ag Secretary will enter into a Memorandum of Agreement with the Chair of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) to be a permanent member of CFIUS. This is something Senator Tuberville has pushed for since he entered the Senate with his Foreign Adversary Risk Management (FARM) Act. In addition to the FARM Act, Sen. Tuberville has introduced multiple other pieces of legislation to help combat the rise of foreign influence in our domestic ag supply chains during his time on the Senate Ag Committee, including the AFIDA Act and the Protecting America’s Agricultural Land from Foreign Harm Act. According to the most recent data from the USDA, Alabama has the fourth-highest amount of foreign-owned farmland, at 2.2 million acres.
Read Sen. Tuberville’s remarks below or watch on YouTube or Rumble.
“I always looked for a day like this when I was coaching. I’d work the hell out of them, and we’d line up down there in the parking lot and just run for about an hour, you know?
Just think about it right now though, our farmers every day go out every morning to scratch the ground, to try to make a living, and try to feed all of us in this country. And they’re very important. I’m on the Ag Committee [and the] Armed Services Committee. I’ve seen it all. I’m not a politician. I’ve been on the front row and been able to watch the devastation of our farming community in the last four years under the Democrat, Socialist, Communist Biden party. It was devastating.
Input costs [were] high, $5 diesel, [and] instead of a $700,000 cotton picker, they’re a million dollars and a half. They wanted to put our farmers under. We lost 150,000 farms and 25,000 farmers in the last few years. Folks, we are in trouble in Ag. Real trouble. And we just tried to help them with reference prices in the Big Beautiful Bill we just passed, but they’re gonna need a lot of help. They are scratching and clawing just to make a living.
Thanks [to] Brooke for putting this on.
China is a threat. They’re not [just] a threat— they are dominating us in almost everything that they do because we’ve sat back, and the politicians have been counting their money instead of doing what’s right, and helping this country stay in the front. We’ve got to be number one. We can’t be number two. We’ve got to fight back. They are coming into our country and buying our farmland.
In my state of Alabama alone, they own 2.2 million acres of farmland. That’s right—in Alabama—foreign adversaries [own our land]. It’s embarrassing, what we’ve done. Now, don’t blame the farmers. The farmers have to make a living. And if they can’t make a living, they have to sell their farmland.
The Biden Administration forced our farmers to sell their farmland by all the things they did to them—it’s a disgrace. Brooke is going to bring that back. President Trump’s going to bring that back.
The one thing I’m trying to do is I’m trying to pass the FARM Act [and the Protecting America’s Agricultural Land from] Foreign Adversaries Act. What is that? We have a group in this country called CFIUS. CFIUS is a group of Cabinet members that determine who buys what if there is a foreign sale. I mean, they all get together, and they look at it, whether it’s a steel company, whether it’s farmland, whether it’s some kind of business, that’s what CFIUS does. And it’s made up of high-ranking Cabinet members in the White House. Who is not on there? The Secretary of Agriculture. What the hell are we doing? I mean, how far behind are we? We have to get the Secretary of Agriculture on CFIUS to protect our farmland. If we don’t do it, we’re going to continue to lose at the end of the day.
So, thanks for being here. In a few minutes, we’re lining up down in this endzone, and we’re going to start running this way until I get tired of watching.
Thank you very much. God bless you.”
Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, HELP and Aging Committees.
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