“A bill to amend the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 to require reports to contain geospatial data, and for other purposes.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section establishes geospatial data requirements for reports submitted under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA), which requires foreign persons acquiring, transferring, or holding interests (other than security interests) in U.S. agricultural land to report specified details to the Secretary of Agriculture. The requirements are as follows: (1) inclusion of geospatial data delineating the property boundaries of the agricultural land; (2) submission of such data in an open-source format compatible with widely available geographic information system software (e.g., QGIS or equivalent), as approved by the Secretary; and (3) authorization for the Secretary to make the data available to federal, state, and local agencies and the public for oversight, transparency, and national security purposes, with a directive for the Secretary—in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence and Secretary of Defense—to use the data to identify national security concerns (e.g., proximity to military installations, critical infrastructure, or sensitive environmental areas).
This section directs the Secretary of Agriculture, not later than 180 days after enactment, to revise regulations implementing the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA; 7 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.), which requires foreign persons to report acquisitions or transfers of interests in U.S. agricultural land to USDA. The revisions must (1) for reports under AFIDA section 2 (7 U.S.C. 3501) involving a person associated with a foreign adversary (as defined in new AFIDA section 9, 7 U.S.C. 3508), set the percentage under 7 CFR 781.2(k)(1) at 5 percent, under (k)(2) at 10 percent, and under (k)(3) at 20 percent; and (2) require any AFIDA section 2 reporter to disclose any foreign adversary or affiliate holding a 5 percent or greater interest in that reporter. (Thus, this lowers ownership thresholds defining foreign person status—and expands reporting—for foreign adversaries.)
This section revises USDA's authority under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA)—which requires foreign persons to report acquisitions or changes in interests in U.S. agricultural land—by (1) redesignating the existing general monitoring and compliance authority as subsection (a); (2) requiring the Secretary to prioritize enforcement actions—including investigations, audits, compliance reviews, and penalties—for transactions involving foreign adversaries, with priority given to persons associated with the People's Republic of China; and (3) requiring the Secretary to refer to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) any transaction determined to pose a national security risk.
This section establishes a definition of "foreign adversary" under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA) (7 U.S.C. 3508) by cross-referencing the meaning given the term in 15 CFR 791.2 (or successor regulation), including entities described in 15 CFR 791.4 (or successor regulation). It also revises the section heading and format of existing definitions (e.g., capitalizing paragraph headings, changing semicolons to periods, and redesignating paragraphs (2) through (6) as paragraphs (3) through (7) to accommodate the new term).