If you haven’t seen the onslaught of political attack ads targeting Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s vote as a state senator regarding foreign ownership, I would love to hear about the view from under that rock you are dwelling. It is insane that the issue they have chosen to target is as make believe as the talking bullfrogs featured on a certain beer commercial.
I have little tolerance for cowardly ads falsely bashing the records of candidates who have stood firm for the men and women producing food for the citizens of this state and beyond. The bogus ads are claiming that Schmitt voted to give up our farm ground to the Chinese, surrender our sovereignty and pledge allegiance to President Xi Jinping. Okay, this is a bit of a stretch, but not over the top if you watched the ads.
The fact is foreign ownership of farm ground in Missouri was illegal, but the ads didn’t tell you foreigners were still buying farm land. In fact, when the legislation was being debated, the Missouri Department of Agriculture initially estimated that around three quarters of a percent of Missouri farm ground was foreign owned. How is that possible considering it was illegal? Well, there was little-to-no enforcement of the law and no rock solid way of tracking the ownership of the land. The intent of the legislation was to fix a broken law and cap the amount of foreign-owned farm land to one percent and put in place a program for the Missouri Department of Agriculture to approve and track purchases. Sounds like good government, doesn’t it?
Schmitt has surely done something more awful than trying to add accountability and transparency into our laws in this state. That’s exactly what he and 31 other senators from both political parties did with the vote on the so-called Chinese bill. Only one senator (a republican) opposed the bill. By the way, the legislation had absolutely nothing to do with China. We need leaders who can identify problems and provide solutions and that is exactly what was done in 2013 in a very bipartisan way.
In the ads, Trudy Busch Valentine also implies that foreign ownership is pure evil. I guess she forgot about the 2008 sale of a prominent Missouri agribusiness to a Belgium company for roughly $52 billion. The hypocrisy is truly mind blowing. That’s what makes the ads as comical as the three bullfrogs who were featured in commercials working together to say “bud” … “wise” … “er.” When this candidate is on television condemning foreign ownership, all I can do is laugh and have a greater appreciation for talking frogs.
Farmer and executive vice president of the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association
