Rep. Dusty Johnson, business leaders, academics talk the impact of China on South Dakota

Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-South Dakota, met with business leaders and academics Monday during a roundtable in Sioux Falls to discuss their perceptions of China, the Chinese Communist Party and what steps the United States must take in its political and economic relationship with the Asian country.

That includes being wary of fully breaking off the U.S.-China trade relationships but also acknowledging that the U.S. must diversify its own products, from food to mineral mining. However, the roundtable discussion did also consider the threat cyber attacks from China posed on South Dakota agriculture.

Johnson, who sits on the bipartisan House Select Committee on the Chinese Community Party, said China is a different threat than what the U.S. faced during the Cold War because the former Soviet Union wasn’t considered an economic power.

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“This is going to be a lot more complicated situation fraught with some peril,” Johnson said, mentioning while on the Select Committee, witnesses have said the U.S. needs to walk a tightrope between working with the CCP and not giving China too much power over the economy.

Such diversification can include food, medicine and critical minerals, all of which Johnson said would require “a certain amount of American inward investment. It’s going to require a certain American willingness to work with our allies.”

Jerry Schmitz, the executive director of the South Dakota Soybean Association, said the U.S. and its allies need to come together.

“[China is] the gorilla in the room,” he said. “They are the consumer and if we say we’re not going to sell to China, we’re only going to sell it to a third [party], then another country is going to come in and buy our soybeans, transfer them to China. They gain, we lose.”

Nearly 60% of soybeans from South Dakota are exported to China. U.S. dairy products are also heavily exported to China, with 3% of the country consuming American milk.

Schmitz added that in the 2018-2019 trade war between China and the U.S., which impacted soybean producers, the average South Dakota soybean farmer lost $50,000.

If the U.S. were to fully depart from China with regards to trade, Evert Van der Sluis, an economics professor at South Dakota State University, said the U.S. could expect a serious drop in economic output and prices on products to rise.

Prepping South Dakota farmers for cyber attacks

And while China, as well as Russia, continue to flex their hacking muscles, it’s becoming more important cybersecurity capacity within the food and agricultural realms must grow.

José-Marie Griffiths, the president of Dakota State University, said it wasn’t until 2015 when the Department of Agriculture wrote about the cybersecurity of food and ag as a critical infrastructure.

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Critical infrastructure is defined as assets, systems and networks necessary for the way of life in the U.S. and that any threat to one of the 16 defined sectors could have potential impacts on national security, public health, the economy or safety, according to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

“I think a lot of people think, ‘Gosh, we’re out in the open air, the fresh air and lovely environment,'" Griffiths said. "Nobody really thinks about how it is now increasingly at risk because of the amount of technology that’s actually incorporated into that infrastructure."

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Students at DSU and SDSU are learning how to protect such infrastructure, such as precision agriculture, from cyber attacks.

“I believe that the food and agricultural infrastructure has some vulnerabilities that need to be protected,” she said, adding because South Dakota’s largest industry is agriculture, a potential cyber attack is something she is concerned about. “There are ways to develop that protection.”

Johnson said U.S. and telecommunication companies were quick to act in banning the use of Chinese telecommunication company Huawei's equipment due to national security concerns. But in other areas, like food, the U.S. has been slower to act.

He pointed to China’s purchase of foreign farmland and agricultural processing facilities.

“That is an unusual degree of investment by a foreign government and their partners,” Johnson said.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Dusty Johnson meets with business leaders, academics about impact of China