To: Committee on Agriculture
From: Paul Schecklman, Northwoods Policy Network
Date: 10/21/2025
Subject: Support for Assembly Bill 30

Chairman Tranel, and members of the Committee on Agriculture, thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony in favor of Assembly Bill 30.

My name is Paul Schecklman. I am the Director of the Northwoods Policy Network, an organization focused on enhancing growth and opportunity in our northern and rural regions of the state. As a doctoral candidate in Defense and Strategic Studies, this issue is prevalent in my research.

Our farmland and forests are integral to our state economy and economic opportunity. Our farms and forests should be producing meaningful products and jobs for American communities. These purchases place an increasingly high cost on new prospective farmers and family-owned operations that are already facing high costs of doing business here.

Additionally, their ownership can determine our state and national security. Every acre of land owned by a foreign adversary holds the potential to be used as a platform for espionage and surveillance. This is especially true in areas that are located near military bases, critical infrastructure, and sensitive commercial operations. The Communist Party of China remains in American news regularly for corporate espionage, incidents of agro-terrorism, telecommunication targeting, intellectual property theft, and trespassing onto sensitive sites. Their commitment to gray-zone tactics exploits our systems and leaves us vulnerable. We need to look no further than the Russia-Ukraine War to see how small parcels and assets can be used to deploy lethal attacks.

States, like Wisconsin, must act. This bill is a great first step in addressing the foreign adversarial threats facing our nation. The majority of Americans support legislation like this and it is encouraging to see Wisconsin’s legislature leading the way.

For these reasons, we support AB30 and a continued focus on reducing Wisconsin’s vulnerabilities from nefarious actors.

Thank you again for your consideration,

Paul Schecklman