There has been renewed concern in recent months about purchases by foreign citizens of farmland in the United States. In addition to numerous newspaper and magazine articles on such purchases, the U.S. Congress and a number of state legislatures have become concerned with the subject. Foreign ownership of farmland has been restricted in 20 states, and more recently the U.S. Congress approved legislation that would require foreign investors to report all purchases or long-term leases of American farmland to the Secretary of Agriculture. Most of the objections to alien ownership are based on emotional factors, which, although having important economic implications, are in themselves difficult to analyze. This article examines some of the underlying implications of the objections, demonstrates the conflict between economic forces and the widely held utopian view of agriculture that farms should be largely owned by the operator, and analyzes some important economic factors implicit in the arguments against foreign ownership.