By Bruce Sherrick and Juo-Han Tsay
This article examines foreign ownership of US farmland and introduces an interactive mapping utility developed by the TIAA Center for Farmland Research that allows identification and delineation of foreign ownership by county, type, and use; along with the rankings of countries represented among the foreign ownership data.
The Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) has required foreign persons to report their interests in U.S. agricultural land since 1978. For most of that time the annual AFIDA report attracted limited attention beyond the USDA and the academic research community. Over the past few years however, foreign investment in farmland has become a politically charged issue with regular assertions by politicians and in the farm press that foreign interests are buying significant shares of US farmland and posing a threat to National Security interests. In response, many states have reviewed or updated their laws on foreign ownership of agricultural land and numerous state and federal proposals have been introduced in the last two years to change reporting and oversight (see https://nationalaglawcenter.org/foreign-investments-in-ag/ for summaries of state and federal proposals). In any case, AFIDA results in a dataset that allows a systematic tabulation of foreign holdings in a consistently collected framework through time which allows for a more factual understanding of actual foreign holdings. In January 2026 USDA released its most recent report AFIDA covering holdings through December 31, 2024, alongside a new online portal for filing disclosures. These data are used in the following and in the utility which will continue to reflect the most recent data each time new filings are available.
AFIDA Data – What is Included?
In total, AFIDA identifies 46.3 million acres of U.S. agricultural land in which a foreign interest holds a reportable position. Reportable positions are generally defined as any interest in agricultural land of ten acres or more. The term “interest in” is broader than direct ownership including leases of ten years or longer, which is the form most wind and solar developers use to assemble land for potential future developments. Furthermore, the term “agricultural land” includes forestland, farmland held for both crop cultivation and pastureland, and other agricultural land. Nearly half of the total acreage reported in AFIDA is forest land, and holders from Canada account for the largest share of that category by a wide margin. Leaseholds also represent a substantial fraction of the total due to the typical feature that say an 80-acre field has the potential for a wind tower which might occupy roughly one acre if developed, while the owner retains ownership of the remainder for all practical purposes.
The design of the requirements and the reporting requirements includes location to the county level, ownership identification (e.g. name) and type (e.g., corporation, individual, etc.), country of citizenship, acres, type of ownership (fee simple, partial, life estate, trust, purchase contract, lease, etc.), acquisition and valuation details, and primary uses delineated across forest, crop, pasture, and non-agricultural (e.g., solar). Shares of ownership and citizenship codes can include partial interests shared with US citizen owners, and secondary or “look through” ownership records. Parcels connected to China, Russia, Iran, and N. Korea require additional reporting in the form of noting those relationships.
Some records indicate a low zero percentage of the asset is currently controlled by a foreign interest but remains in the dataset, presumably within a structure such as a public fund that could accommodate traded equity ownership (e.g. a publicly traded company like Tysons or Smithfield Foods), and some have no usable single country code, but these cases represent a very small fraction of the total. Additionally, some reported parcels are actually owned by US interest, but reported into the system for unknown reasons. Finally, the share of ownership is required in addition to total acreage to allow for example, a shared ownership interest in 80 acres that is owned 50% by a foreign interest to be distinguished from full ownership and is attributed 40 acres in total calculations as a result. Records were excluded from the acreage counts with a share of foreign ownership listed as zero, or if the ownership country code is US.
As the academic and political interests in ownership records seem to be somewhat concentrated on farmland used in crop production, sensible segregations of the data among forestland used for commercial timber purposes, and leaseholds related to renewable energy were categorized and tabulated separately for sub analyses. Within the farm and timber related categories, simple fee ownership, partial fee interests, life estates, trust beneficiary interests, and purchase contracts are the primary forms of ownership interest included. And, the small amount of non-agricultural land that was reported (under 1 million acres) is excluded.
Source : illinois.edu