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Revelations about Chinese activities in the US agriculture and farming sector have raised a number of issues.
Evidence of increased activity by Chinese national affiliates has sparked something of a red scare among commentators. This includes purported national security concerns, with some pointing to large purchases of agricultural land near US military installations.
Fears of some sort of invasion by purchase proxy may be overblown. Some of the maps circulating on social media appear to exaggerate the amount of land owned, and seemingly no one has investigated whether the purchasers can clearly be connected to the Chinese government. The sheer number of US military installations within the country means that some purchases, by total randomness, are going to end up in close proximity anyway.
But some real worries have cropped up that directly involve the cannabis sector. It appears the cannabis growing sector has been marked as a potentially lucrative market for Chinese involvement. A recent story by National Public Radio (NPR) – picked up and shared through various cannabis publications – dealt with an investigation of a Chinese-owned cannabis growing operation in New Mexico.
Ignorance is not bliss
The operation in question – Bliss Farms – had a licence to grow at the time (subsequently revoked). But not only was it exceeding permitted growing limits – diverting the remainder into the more lucrative black market – it was also violating all kinds of worker and consumer protections.
NPR reported unsafe environmental conditions that would have likely led to potential product issues.
“Just a very disastrous grow. There was trash, water, fertilizers, nutrients, pesticides leaking into the ground,” Todd Stevens, director of the state’s Cannabis Control Division told NPR. “As soon as the officer stepped in, I think red flags started going off everywhere.”
The farm was also one of the many end-stations for a new line of illegal Chinese immigration into the US – with reportedly thousands of Chinese nationals flying into South America and embarking on the same perilous journey north to the US-Mexico border that has featured heavily in US political discourse over the past few years.
Immigrants vulnerable to exploitation
NPR said US border authorities report they encountered 37,000 Chinese people who crossed irregularly into the US southern border last year — more than the past ten years combined. This is also some 80% of the 45,800 or so total Chinese entries into the US encountered in 2023.
Many of these immigrants end up working illegally while waiting for asylum processing, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation – as happened at the Bliss Farms site where they worked 15-hour shifts and had mobile phones as well as passports confiscated to prevent them leaving.
Overall the issue raises red flags for the legal cannabis sector, without having to delve into the Chinese element of it. (It can be said with almost 100% certainty that what was seen at Bliss Farms is likely repeated across US territories, with multiple nationals exploited and multiple nationalities responsible for the exploitation – including US citizens.)
Undercutting legal operations
It is pretty well established that there are licensed grows utilising the same illicit mass growing practices used by illegal counterparts and feeding both the legal and black markets.
These operations can undercut legal grows by both producing at a lower cost through worker exploitations and avoiding adhering to consumer/product regulations, while also generating a higher turnover from products sold onto the black market that do not have to be taxed.
The legal sales component is a danger too, as these questionable products are likely indistinguishable from end products made utilising minimum product standards, environmental protections and so forth.
So while the “red scare” in the green game may be overblown, the red flags it raises are legitimate concerns – with wider applicability – that need to be urgently addressed to head off any more serious issues emerging that could threaten the future of the legal industry in the US.
– Freddie Dawson CannIntelligence staff
Image: AI-generated
