U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins today announced continued actions to protect American agriculture. This follows Tuesday’s announcement of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Farm Security Action Plan.
As part of this latest suite of actions, Secretary Rollins released a Foreign Farm Land Purchases map that is searchable by country, launched a new web portal to report violations of the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA), signed a Memorandum of Understanding related to the implementation of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CIFIUS), and reminded State agencies of requirements to share data, ensuring illegal aliens do not receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.
“Gone are the days of foreign adversaries taking advantage of our farmland, farmers, and programs paid for by American taxpayers. The National Farm Security Action Plan was a first step by USDA to defend the homeland. Our work is far from done. We will continue to restore farm security and expose the extent to which our adversaries have targeted American agriculture,” said Secretary Rollins.
The Foreign Farm Land Purchases webpage indicates which countries own land in the United States. It is tracked by which county the land is located in, not geographic boundaries of the land. USDA will work on continuous improvements to make the data more real time and more exact over the coming weeks and months.
The new reporting portal will receive and review claims of adversarial foreign influence on federal, state, and local policymakers with respect to purchases of U.S. farmland and business dealings in other facets of U.S. agricultural supply chains. This has taken place previously across various bodies of government. Submissions may be accepted anonymously or contact information may be provided for appropriate follow-up by USDA.
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