[Republic Brief] Concerns in Grand Forks, North Dakota, over a Chinese Communist Party-linked agribusiness are mounting with their plans to build a corn mill that is feared to pose national security risks for the country because of the company’s planned proximity to a top military base in the state.
Fufeng USA, a global bio-fermentation company, plans to use the corn mill facility to extract ingredients that go into animal nutrition feed products sold in the North American market.
While some local politicals see jobs and money for the local population, a few US lawmakers are growing very uneasy about bigger problems, like the potential access China would get to America’s military secrets while in the location.
"It’s 370 acres near Grand Forks, North Dakota, which is in the heart of the Red River Valley. In other words, it’s very productive farmland. Also importantly, it’s about 12 miles from Grand Forks Air Force Base, which is a very sophisticated Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) base. They fly Global Hawks.
We just put in a new ground station for the first tranche of satellites by the Space Development Agency. So it’s a vital uplink downlink data center at the Grand Forks Air Force Base.
Proximity both to the important farmland and to an important airbase make this particularly problematic," US Senator for North Dakota Kevin Cramer said in a statement from his office.
"I’m more broadly concerned by the fact that China can come in and continually make investments and buy property, enter into our food supply chain right here in the United States. Remember, during the pandemic, it was discovered that China’s ownership of meat processing in the United States made our meat supply vulnerable. 
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