H.R. 1629 — Farmland Security Act of 2025

This section amends the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA)—which requires foreign persons acquiring or transferring interests in U.S. agricultural land to report such transactions to the Secretary of Agriculture—as follows: (1) revises civil penalties for failures to report or submitting false or incomplete reports by eliminating the requirement for civil actions by the Attorney General; increasing the maximum penalty for foreign-owned shell corporations (i.e., legal entities with no or nominal operations) to 100 percent of the fair market value of the agricultural land interest involved (from 25 percent); and providing that such shell corporations avoid the penalty if they remedy the violation within 60 days of Secretary notice; (2) requires the Secretary to conduct an annual compliance audit of at least 10 percent of AFIDA reports and to provide annual training to state and county personnel on identifying unreported foreign-owned agricultural land; (3) directs the Secretary to submit to Congress, beginning 180 days after enactment and annually thereafter, a report on research into foreign agricultural leasing activities and their impacts, trends in foreign-owned shell corporation purchases of agricultural land, and foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural production capacity; and (4) authorizes $2 million annually for FY2025 through FY2030 to carry out AFIDA.