The Agriculture Department is seeking public comment on ways to tighten reporting of foreign ownership of agricultural land, including proposed actions that may require congressional approval.
An advanced notice of proposed rulemaking scheduled to be published on Monday in the Federal Register cites a Government Accountability Office report released in 2024 that offered recommendations for improving the enforcement of the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act, or AFIDA.
“USDA seeks input on regulatory or other changes that may improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its AFIDA reporting and filing requirements,” the department says in the 10-page notice.
“USDA is interested in comments on topics including the interests in agricultural land covered under AFIDA, identification of required filers, and the information included on the filed report. USDA is receptive to suggested changes that could be made within the current statutory authority as well as changes that may require new or revised statutory authority.”
The GAO report found that USDA staff had failed to “sufficiently verify” the accuracy of foreign land ownership data and were slow to share data with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which oversees foreign acquisitions of assets considered important to U.S. security.
AFIDA, which was enacted in 1978, requires foreign investors to file documentation with USDA detailing land acquisitions and dispositions or incur a late fee worth 0.1% of the land's value for each week purchases go unreported. The penalty is capped at 25% of the land's value.
The USDA notice says foreign U.S. ag land acquisitions increased from about 600,000 acres a year from 2013 to 2017 to an average of 2.6 million acres annually from 2017 to 2023.
The notice includes a number of topics and questions for commenters to address. Among the questions is whether “foreign persons from countries designated as foreign adversaries” should be treated the same as. “all other foreign persons” when it comes to filing requirements.
USDA also wants to know the best way to get “a correct, verifiable description or geospatial map of the agricultural land that is broadly usable by a range of audiences.”
“USDA’s policy goal is to obtain valuable, comprehensive, and verifiable information about interests in U.S. agricultural land held by foreign persons. USDA is further interested in streamlining and strengthening AFIDA regulations to improve process efficiency, address national security interests, and provide timely, accurate, and detailed data for CFIUS agencies’ use,” the notice says.
