“To amend the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 to establish an additional reporting requirement, and for other purposes.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section amends the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA), which requires foreign persons to report acquisitions or transfers of interests (other than security interests) in U.S. agricultural land to the Secretary of Agriculture, by (1) establishing a minimum 1% ownership threshold (previously, any interest) for such reporting when multiple foreign persons acquire or transfer interests in the same land, applicable to each person directly through the first tier of ownership or in aggregate through other entities; and (2) revising the enforcement provision to retitle it "Investigative actions," retain the Secretary's general investigative authority, and direct the Farm Production and Conservation Business Center (FPAC-BC) to validate AFIDA data, ensure compliance with the new threshold, and identify civil penalty violators in coordination with the Farm Service Agency.
This section directs the Secretary of Agriculture (1) to enter into one or more memoranda of understanding with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) not later than one year after enactment of this Act to share all relevant information from reports on foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land submitted under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA, 7 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.), including the identity of each submitter and submission date; (2) to update the Farm Service Agency's “Foreign Investment Disclosure” handbook not later than one year after enactment, incorporating recommendations from the Government Accountability Office report entitled “Foreign Investments in U.S. Agricultural Land: Enhancing Efforts to Collect, Track, and Share Key Information Could Better Identify National Security Risks” and dated January 18, 2024, with subsequent updates every 10 years thereafter; and (3) unless a streamlined electronic submission and retention process for AFIDA disclosures (as required by section 773 of division A of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023) is established by one year after enactment, to have the Farm Production and Conservation Business Center, in coordination with the Farm Service Agency, analyze required steps and implementation benchmarks by that date and submit a report describing the analysis and timeline to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and the House Committee on Agriculture.