SACRAMENTO, CA – Senator Melissa Hurtado (D-Bakersfield) released the following statement after her bill, Senate Bill 224, which puts California in control of its food supply chain by preventing foreign governments from purchasing agricultural land, and requiring the California Office of Emergency Services to issue an annual report on foreign ownership of California’s resources, passed the Senate Agriculture Committee.

“The agricultural land in California that produces one-third of our country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts is invaluable to our state’s GDP,” said Senator Hurtado. “I thank my Senate Agriculture members for their support of the Farm and Food Security Act, and for recognizing the imperative need to secure our food systems. This bill is a central part of how we get the data needed to have a better understanding of the role foreign owned governments may play in our energy and water facilities and agricultural land.”

The U.S. Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act requires foreign investors who acquire, transfer or hold an interest in U.S. agricultural land to report such holdings and transactions to the Secretary of Agriculture. These disclosures provide the federal government the ability to monitor various aspects of our food supply chain. However, current state law does not require agricultural land purchases to make the same disclosures to state agencies, leaving an information gap in a critical sector of the state’s economy and security.

Senator Melissa Hurtado currently represents the 16th Senate District in the California Legislature, which includes portions of Fresno, Tulare, Kings and Kern Counties. Hurtado is Chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, and a member of the Environmental Quality, Health, Human Services, and Natural Resources and Water Committees, and Joint Legislative Committee on Climate Change Policies. 

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