A bill introduced by Republicans in Congress is meant to make it easier to find out who owns foreign farmland. Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Rick Crawford (R-AR) introduced the Agricultural Foreign Investment Transparency Act on December 8, with support from many other Republican lawmakers.
Rep. Crawford said, “This bill would bring to light American farmland that is owned by entities in communist China and other places, so we can figure out how much of a threat it is to our national security and take action.”
Farms.com says that the bill calls for the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act to be changed. In 1978, the U.S. passed this law to set up a way to find out who owns farmland outside of the country.
Reps. Stefanik and Crawford’s bill would: require the Secretary of Agriculture to put all new and old AFIDA reports on the USDA website for everyone to see; Expand the information that needs to be reported to AFIDA to include security interests and land leases for any length of time, including agricultural land that isn’t being used. Increase oversight and broaden the scope of reporting to make sure that there is a report of all acquisitions of land that isn’t being used, companies that issue foreign-traded equity securities, and all interests bought, sold, or held by a foreign person.
USDA data shows that as of December 2019, foreign investors owned about 35.2 million acres of farmland, which was worth about $63 billion and made up about 3% of all farmland. About the size of the state of Iowa, this area is about this big.
About 29% of this land is owned by Canadian investors, but people from more than 100 other countries, like the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, the UK, and China, also own parts of U.S. farmland.
