H.R. 1920 — FARMLAND Act of 2025

This section amends civil penalty provisions of the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA)—which requires foreign persons to report acquisitions, transfers, or changes in use of U.S. agricultural land to USDA within 90 days—by (1) imposing mandatory civil penalties (previously discretionary upon Secretary determination) for failures to report or knowing submission of incomplete, misleading, or false reports; (2) making collected penalties available without further appropriation for Act enforcement; (3) specifying that penalties are recoverable in a civil action; (4) setting the penalty amount at not less than 5 percent but not more than 25 percent (from not more than 25 percent) of the fair market value of the agricultural land interest involved; (5) requiring public disclosure of names of persons who pay penalties, including after appeals; and (6) directing USDA to conduct outreach using existing resources to educate agricultural land landlords, owners, operators, producers, tenants, county property appraisers, land appraisers, and real estate auction companies on reporting requirements. This section further requires buyers, sellers, real estate agents, brokers, and title companies involved in agricultural land purchases or transfers to conduct due diligence and certify compliance with AFIDA.

This section requires the Secretary of Agriculture, with support from the Secretary of Homeland Security and other relevant agency heads, to submit to specified congressional committees (i.e., Senate and House Agriculture, Homeland Security, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and Intelligence committees) a report on national security risks from purchases and management of U.S. agricultural land by covered foreign persons (i.e., citizens or entities from covered foreign countries, including China, Russia, state sponsors of terrorism, and others designated by the Secretaries) not later than 180 days after enactment and annually thereafter. The unclassified report, which may include a classified annex, must describe for the covered year (1) acres of such land owned or managed by covered foreign persons, by state, including each state's percentage relative to total acreage; (2) threats to food security, food safety, biosecurity, or environmental protection from ownership by covered foreign countries; (3) annual and total costs of Farm Service Agency support for such land; (4) use of such land for industrial espionage or intellectual property transfer; (5) potential use near critical infrastructure (e.g., manufacturing facilities, water sources) to monitor, disrupt, or interrupt U.S. national or economic security; and (6) other threats to the agricultural industry or U.S. national security.

This section amends the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA), which requires foreign persons to report acquisitions and certain long-term leases of U.S. agricultural land to USDA, as follows: (1) replaces section 4 with provisions establishing a Senior Executive Service position as Chief of Operations of Investigative Actions within USDA—who may hold a concurrent USDA position and must report to the Secretary or designee—to hire staff, monitor AFIDA compliance, refer violations, investigate malign foreign efforts to steal agricultural technology or disrupt the U.S. agricultural base (in coordination with specified federal and state agencies), conduct annual audits of the AFIDA database, enter into interagency agreements, refer agricultural land acquisitions by foreign persons from foreign entities of concern to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, and publish annual summaries of section 2 disclosures; (2) revises section 9 formatting and adds definitions of "foreign entity of concern" (as defined in section 9901 of the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 [15 U.S.C. 4651]) and "malign effort" (any hostile effort undertaken by, at the direction of, on behalf of, or with substantial support of a foreign entity of concern government); and (3) adds section 11 requiring USDA to submit to Congress (a) an initial report on implementation progress within 180 days of enactment, (b) within 180 days a feasibility report on quantifying threats from foreign entities of concern to U.S. food security, biosecurity, food safety, environmental protection, and national defense and on developing a discovery and review process for certain transactions submitted to CFIUS, and (c) annual reports on AFIDA activities for 10 years.

This section amends section 721 of the Defense Production Act of 1950 (50 U.S.C. 4565) to expand the authority of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)—which reviews certain foreign investments and transactions for national security risks—to cover additional real estate transactions by a foreign entity of concern (as defined in 15 U.S.C. 4651). Specifically, it designates as covered transactions the purchase, lease, or concession of private or public real estate by such an entity if (1) the value exceeds $5 million (or, combined with the entity's other such transactions over the prior three years, exceeds $5 million) or the acreage exceeds 320 acres (or, combined, exceeds 320 acres); and (2) the real estate is primarily used for agriculture (including livestock and forestry), extraction of fossil fuels, natural gas, or renewable energy sources, or extraction of critical precursor materials for biological technology industries, information technology components, or national defense technologies. The section further (1) adds as a review factor the potential effects of a transaction on U.S. food security, food safety, biosecurity, environmental protection, or national defense; (2) adds the Secretary of Agriculture and Commissioner of Food and Drugs as CFIUS members; (3) requires the annual CFIUS report to Congress to list all U.S. real estate owned by foreign entities of concern or closely associated persons; and (4) directs the Secretary of the Treasury, in coordination with the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security, to submit to Congress within 180 days of enactment a report assessing the feasibility of requiring retroactive divestment of such real estate and describing CFIUS's process for reviewing national security implications of Chinese government-linked investments connected to the Chinese Communist Party. The amendments apply to any CFIUS review or investigation initiated on or after the date of enactment.

This section directs the Secretaries of Agriculture and Homeland Security, acting jointly and subject to the availability of appropriations, to develop not later than three years after enactment a publicly available database of agricultural land owned by foreign persons (as defined in the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 [AFIDA]), using data collected pursuant to AFIDA and publicly available FSA-153 forms submitted to the Farm Service Agency. (As background, AFIDA requires foreign persons acquiring or transferring interests in U.S. agricultural land to report details via FSA-153 forms to USDA, promoting transparency on foreign ownership.) Each database entry must include information from the applicable FSA-153 form. This section further requires the Chief of Operations for Investigative Actions, not later than 180 days after the database is made publicly available and annually thereafter, to audit the database and report to the appropriate committees of Congress on its accuracy and recommendations to improve AFIDA reporting compliance.

This section prohibits any owner or operator who is a foreign person (as defined in 7 U.S.C. 3508) from participating in Farm Service Agency (FSA) programs (using definitions of owner, operator, and participant from 7 CFR 718.2, as in effect on the date of enactment). To enforce this prohibition, the Secretary of Agriculture must (1) require certification from applicants that they are not foreign persons; (2) monitor compliance using data from the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (7 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.) and FSA-153 forms; and (3) assess civil penalties against foreign persons who receive prohibited benefits or submit false information, not to exceed 125% of such benefits, with penalties recoverable by the Attorney General and available without further appropriation for enforcement. The Secretary must submit an annual report to the appropriate congressional committees describing violations, per-program savings, compliance actions, penalties imposed, and other relevant enforcement information.

This section authorizes appropriations to carry out this Act and the amendments made by this Act—(1) $35 million for FY2026, to remain available until expended, for secure workspace buildout under the amendments made by section 4 and database system development under section 6; and (2) $9 million for each of FY2026 through 2030 for all other activities.