USDA Seeks Overhaul of Foreign Farmland Disclosure Rules Amid Security Concerns
Agency opens comment period on modernizing AFIDA reporting as foreign ownership rises and gaps emerge in tracking, verification, and national-security oversight
USDA opened an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (link) to revisit and potentially tighten reporting requirements under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA), citing outdated rules, data gaps, and heightened national-security concerns tied to foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land.
AFIDA, enacted in 1978 and last substantively updated in 2006, requires foreign persons to report interests in U.S. farmland. USDA uses those filings to report to Congress and to support interagency reviews, including by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). Since 2017, foreign holdings have accelerated sharply — averaging 2.6 million additional acres per year through 2023 — while scrutiny of land near sensitive military and strategic sites has intensified.
USDA says recent reviews, including a 2024 Government Accountability Office report, found weaknesses in how AFIDA data are collected, verified, shared, and updated. In particular, GAO concluded that USDA does not always provide sufficiently current or detailed information for national-security agencies and lacks tools to fully trace complex ownership structures involving multiple foreign entities.
The agency is now soliciting public input on a broad set of potential changes, including:
- Who must file: Whether current definitions of “foreign person,” “any interest,” and “agricultural land” are too narrow—especially exclusions for short-term leases—and whether foreign adversary countries should be treated differently from close U.S. allies.
- What land information is required: Whether filers should provide more precise, verifiable data, including geospatial mapping, rather than relying on legal descriptions that can be difficult to interpret.
- How indirect ownership is disclosed: Whether USDA should require deeper reporting on foreign investors several layers removed from the direct landholder and how to ensure the completeness and accuracy of ownership chains.
USDA also notes it is transitioning AFIDA filings from paper submissions at county offices to a centralized electronic portal, as directed by Congress in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, a shift it says could support more timely data sharing and oversight.
Comments on the proposed revisions are due by Jan. 28, 2026, and USDA says feedback will inform whether regulatory changes can be made under existing authority or would require new legislation.
