U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama is again pushing legislation that would block U.S. enemies from buying farmland, an effort he says is necessary to ensure the country’s food security.

The bill Tuberville introduced Wednesday with Indiana Sen. Mike Braun and a group of other bipartisan senators prohibits “foreign adversaries” – specifically China, Iran, North Korea and Russia — from purchasing U.S. agricultural land. Other introducing the bill were Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, and Jon Tester, D-Montana. In a post on Twitter announcing the bill, Rubio included an image of a farm with the Chinese flag superimposed over it.

Last year, Tuberville introduced a bill that died in committee seeking to block only China from purchasing U.S. farmland.

Related: Rhetoric vs. reality: How big of threat is China-owned farmland in U.S.?

“The surge of foreign-owned agricultural land in the U.S. demonstrates the need to keep our top foreign adversaries out of our agricultural supply chains,” Tuberville said in a statement announcing the bill. “We must increase federal oversight of foreign investments in agricultural land, especially from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. Our food and national security must be prioritized and protected from bad actors. I’m proud to support this legislation to safeguard our agricultural industry and national interests.”

When it comes to buying up U.S. agricultural land, the threat from China and the other countries appears nominal. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, foreign countries owned about 40 million acres as of Dec. 31, 2021. China accounted for less than 1 percent of that land, the USDA said.

Mykel Taylor, associate professor and ALFA eminent scholar in the College of Agriculture at Auburn University, told AL.com earlier this month that her research revealed that China does not own any agricultural land in Alabama.

As for Russia, North Korea and Iran land holdings, those add up to about 1.3 percent the amount of land owned by China, according to the USDA. Iran owns 2,463 acres in the U.S. agricultural land while Russia owns just 73 acres. North Korea is not listed by the USDA as owning any agricultural land in the U.S.

China’s land holdings, according to Tuberville, has grown dramatically over the past decade – from almost 14,000 acres in 2010 to more than 352,000 in 2021. According to the USDA, 17 countries own more agricultural land than China, which adds up to about 0.88 of all foreign-owned agricultural land in the U.S.

In January, Tuberville introduced the Foreign Adversary Risk Management Act that would assign the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States – a move seen as a measure of protecting America’s farmland from being overtaken by foreign countries. U.S. Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama is a co-sponsor.