China’s expanding interest in Latin America’s agricultural sector now includes directly acquiring and leasing land for cultivation. According to GRAIN, a database tracking global agricultural investments, China has secured some 1 million hectares in the region to date. This push comes as China, home to a fifth of the world’s population, possesses only 10 percent of arable land, per data of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
Such significant investment, however, sparks concerns about national sovereignty over strategic resources, the potential for significant environmental impact from large-scale monoculture, questions of social equity for local communities, and broader geopolitical implications given China’s expanding influence in the region.
In April, China state-owned Hulunbuir State Farm Group, an irrigation and agricultural management company, expressed interest in acquiring or leasing Brazilian land to cultivate soybeans, corn, and cotton. Soybeans are of particular interest to China, which, according to Reuters, imported about 69 million tons from Brazil in 2024, accounting for 71 percent of its total imports.
“What is presented as a commercial partnership has, in fact, become a model of economic, territorial, and productive domination,” writes Brazilian agribusiness consultant Celso Ricardo Ferreira in Brazilian newspaper Jornal da Paraiba. According to the expert, “it’s a model of structural dependence. Brazilian agriculture is positioned as a supplier of raw materials and receives investments in strategic sectors. Meanwhile, China controls logistics, energy, technology, and even the political dynamics of agriculture.”
China is also pursuing agricultural expansion in Colombia to secure essential raw materials. In May, an international agricultural training institute was established with support from South China Agricultural University. Additionally, two experimental agricultural areas will be developed in Colombia, leveraging Chinese technology to boost production of vital crops like rice, crucial for China’s food security.
With Colombia’s recent entry into the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Beijing has also expressed interest in land within the Orinoquía region in eastern Colombia.
This pursuit of land by China risks intensifying Colombia’s historical land conflicts, which have a long record of causing violence and displacement.
“Colombia has land ownership inequality similar to that which existed in South Africa during the apartheid era. Ten percent of rural landowners own 80 percent of the land,” political scientist Daniel Vargas Olarte, professor of Asian and African international politics at the National University of Colombia (UNAL), told Diálogo. According to the expert, “the lack of land distribution drives the population into armed groups and weakens the country’s economic structure.”
Environmental concerns
In March 2024, the regional government of Arequipa, Peru, welcomed a delegation from China’s Ministry of Water Resources, to discuss potential cooperation for the Majes Siguas II irrigation project. This ambitious project aims to transform more than 38,000 hectares of desert into an arable land using a complex irrigation system that diverts water from the Apurímac River, to expand Peru’s agricultural exports. The project, however, has been stalled for eight years, with only 11 percent completed.
The project faces numerous challenges. Local authorities and communities fear a significant reduction in available water resources. The area’s geological characteristics, composed of clayey and unstable soils, also make the entire irrigation system vulnerable, leading to concerns about landslides and water infiltration. There are also reports of a persistent lack of compensation for indigenous and peasant communities who claim they haven’t received promised payments for the use of their land.
The potential involvement of the Chinese government in the Majes Siguas II project raises additional concerns. The track record of Chinese state-backed enterprises, which often carry out such global infrastructure initiatives, includes instances of controversies and sanctions from international bodies due to issues such as fraudulent practices, illegal subcontracting, and contract breaches. Their extensive involvement in large-scale infrastructure projects worldwide has also frequently drawn environmental criticism, citing habitat destruction, alteration of natural water flows, and a concerning lack of transparency in environmental impact assessments.
In Brazil, intensive soybean cultivation for the Chinese market is a primary driver of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna. “China is buying land and products in Brazil, destroying, polluting, and altering the balance of the land,” Patrizia Tomasi-Bensik, a Brazilian engineer and U.N. climate change consultant, told Diálogo.
Driven by China’s demand for soybeans, Brazilian agriculture has sacrificed domestic food production. Data from the National Supply Company (Conab) from the last 19 years reveals a 43 percent decrease in land planted with rice and a 32 percent decrease for beans, both essential Brazilian foods. Meanwhile, soybean cultivation surge by 108 percent and corn by 63 percent over the same period, directly linked to import pressure from Beijing.
The challenges to foreign agricultural expansion
In 2008, China’s Chongqing Grain Group attempted to purchase some 200,000 hectares in Brazil’s Bahia state for cereal cultivation. This deal was thwarted by Brazilian law, which limits foreign land acquisition to 25 percent of a municipality’s territory and restricts land purchases by foreign-controlled Brazilian companies.
“To protect themselves, countries in the region are regulating foreign ownership of land. Brazil, for example, has limited this practice to 5,000 hectares since 2010. Argentina did the same in 2011 by establishing that the percentage of land in foreign hands must not exceed 15 percent of the national territory or 1,000 hectares per region,” Olarte said.
Colombia is currently debating Bill 149-2024, which aims to restrict land purchases by foreigners. A key provision in Article 3 states that foreign individuals or entities cannot own, hold, or possess more than 15 percent of rural land within a municipality’s agricultural boundaries. According to Olarte, “a law that partially limits the foreign ownership of land is urgently needed.”
The overarching goal is to defend national sovereignty and ensure economic independence, both of which are increasingly threatened by China’s expanding global presence and its strategic acquisition of vital resources. This vigilance is crucial for safeguarding a nation’s ability to determine its own future.
