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WASHINGTON, D.C. — As committed to under USDA’s National Farm Security Action Plan (PDF, 1.2 MB) U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L.
Rollins today announced a number of coordinated actions to continue to emphasize American agricultural research and innovation by ensuring ideas stay in America or among our allies, not with hostile nations and that we are putting American farmers and ranchers first in every USDA program, period.
These historic actions strengthen transparency around foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land and ensure federal programs and purchasing preferences do not support supply chains controlled by foreign adversaries. The actions include opening up an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) to allow the public an opportunity to comment as USDA moves to improve the regulation and strengthening the implementation of USDA’s BioPreferred Program to ensure federal programs and purchasing preferences prioritize American producers and manufacturers and rid out foreign adversaries.
“Strengthening national security starts with knowing who owns our farmland and where federal dollars are flowing,” said Secretary Rollins. “These actions close long-standing gaps in oversight and enforcement by improving transparency around foreign land ownership and ensuring USDA programs support American farmers and manufacturers, while prioritizing domestic supply chains – not foreign adversaries.”
AFIDA requires foreign investors who acquire, transfer, or hold an interest in U.S. agricultural land to report such holdings and transactions to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA). USDA’s National Farm Security Action Plan (PDF, 1.2 MB) calls for aggressive implementation of reforms to the AFIDA process including improved verification and monitoring of collected AFIDA data.
USDA seeks input on potential regulatory or other changes that may improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its AFIDA reporting and filing requirements which will result in improved tracking of foreign adversary agricultural land purchases to the public and will further enhance USDA’s Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) (PDF, 164 KB) with Treasury which memorializes cooperation on CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) cases involving the transfer of agricultural land.
Foreign adversary linked entities currently control at least 277,000 acres of agricultural land in the United States.
