Foreign ownership of American farmland has increased 85 percent since 2010

WASHINGTON – Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) introduced the Farmland Security Act of 2025 to build on their work to safeguard rural communities and protect American farmland from shady foreign investments.

The bipartisan legislation builds on a Grassley-Baldwin law to ensure that all foreign investors, including “shell companies,” who buy American agricultural land report their holdings. It additionally strengthens penalties for those who evade filing and invests in research to better understand the impact foreign ownership of farmland has on agricultural production capacity.

“Foreign purchases of American farmland needlessly increase competition for young and beginning farmers and potentially threaten our national security. Family farmers and ranchers have a justified cause for concern. Our commonsense legislation provides the resources needed to monitor these sales and protect against risks they may pose. It also increases penalties for violators, especially shell corporations, who fail to report or misreport their acreage. I’ll never stop fighting to support family farmers and protect our farmland,” Grassley said.

“America’s farmland is critical to the health of our rural communities and our national security. But when foreign investors own farmland or our ability to process food, it can put our national security, domestic food supply, and local communities at risk. Our bipartisan legislation will help bring to light foreign investments in rural America, so we know who is buying up land critical to all of our safety and the future of our agricultural communities,” Baldwin said.

Background:

According to the Department of Agriculture (USDA), approximately 45 million acres of American agricultural land is under foreign ownership – and  85 percent increase since 2010. These investments have the potential to impact America’s food security and national security.

As a then-member of the House of Representatives, Grassley helped author the first reporting requirements to ever address foreign ownership of farmland – the 1978 Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act also directed the USDA Secretary to analyze the information and determine the effects of foreign transactions and holdings on family farms and rural communities.

The Grassley-Baldwin Farmland Security Act of 2022, which was signed into law as part of funding legislation for 2023, imposed requirements for USDA to create digital filings tracking foreign purchases of domestic agricultural land and establish a publicly accessible database of certain disaggregated foreign ownership data for research purposes. It also requires USDA to report to Congress on the impact these investments have on family farms, rural communities and the domestic food supply.

The Farmland Security Act of 2025 takes additional steps to support transparency and better understand the scale and impact of foreign ownership by:

  • Requiring research into trends of foreign-owned “shell corporations” purchasing American agricultural land;
  • Requiring research into foreign ownership of agricultural production capacity and foreign participation in agricultural economic activity in the United States;
  • Requiring USDA to conduct annual compliance audits of no less than ten percent of the reports to ensure completeness and accuracy of filings;
  • Amending reports to Congress to require research into foreign entities’ agricultural leasing activities and the impact it has on rural communities, family farms and the domestic food supply;
  • Requiring USDA to provide annual training to state and county-level staff on the identification of non-reporting foreign-owned agricultural land;
  • Striking the cap on fee of 25% of the agricultural lands valuation for failing to report or misreporting foreign-owned acreage;
  • Requiring a fee of 100% of the agricultural land’s valuation for shell corporations that are failing to report or misreporting foreign-owned acreage, except in cases where the shell corporation remedies non-filing or defective filing within 60 days of notice by the Secretary; and
  • Authorizing $2 million annually for the activities prescribed under the Agriculture Foreign Investment Disclosure Act, as amended.

Companion legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives by Reps. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.).

Full bill text is HERE. A one-pager on the legislation is available HERE.

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