S. 886 — FARMLAND Act of 2025

This section revises civil penalties under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA) for failures to report or submitting false or incomplete reports on foreign purchases, sales, or leases of U.S. agricultural land (7 U.S.C. 3502), as follows: (1) redesignates the penalty amount provision as subsection (d) and establishes new subsections (b) making penalty collections available without appropriation for AFIDA enforcement, and (c) authorizing recovery in a civil action; (2) sets the maximum penalty at 25 percent of the fair market value of the land involved (unchanged) but establishes a minimum of 5 percent (new); (3) requires public disclosure of persons who pay penalties under the section, including after appeals; and (4) directs USDA to conduct outreach using existing resources to educate agricultural landowners, tenants, producers, county appraisers, and real estate professionals on reporting requirements. This section also adds a new section 5 to AFIDA (after 7 U.S.C. 3503) requiring entities involved in purchasing or transferring U.S. agricultural land (i.e., buyers, sellers, agents, brokers, title companies) to conduct due diligence and certify compliance with AFIDA.

This section directs the Secretary of Agriculture, with support from the Secretary of Homeland Security and other federal agencies, to submit to specified congressional committees (Agriculture committees and others in both chambers, plus Homeland Security, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and Intelligence committees)—not later than 180 days after enactment and annually thereafter—a report on national security risks from purchases and management of U.S. agricultural land by covered foreign persons (i.e., foreign persons from covered foreign countries, including China, Russia, state sponsors of terrorism as designated under 22 U.S.C. 2371 and related laws, or other countries identified by the Secretaries of Homeland Security or Agriculture). The report must include, for the covered year: (1) acres of such land owned or managed by covered foreign persons, by state, and the percentage relative to each state's total acreage; (2) analysis of threats to food security, food safety, biosecurity, or environmental protection; (3) annual and total costs of Farm Service Agency support for such land; (4) analysis of industrial espionage or intellectual property transfer via such land; (5) analysis of potential monitoring, interruption, or disruption of critical infrastructure (e.g., manufacturing facilities, water sources) near such land; and (6) analysis of other threats to U.S. agriculture or national security. Reports must be unclassified, with a possible classified annex consistent with protecting intelligence sources and methods.

This section revises the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA), which requires foreign investors to report acquisitions, transfers, or changes in use of U.S. agricultural land to the Department of Agriculture (USDA). Specifically, the section (1) replaces section 4 of AFIDA with new investigative authorities that require the Secretary of Agriculture to appoint a Senior Executive Service employee as Chief of Operations of Investigative Actions (who may hold a concurrent USDA position), provide secure facilities and clearances, and direct the Chief to monitor AFIDA compliance, refer violations, investigate malign efforts (i.e., hostile actions by or with substantial support from a foreign entity of concern) 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 interagency agreements, refer certain foreign agricultural land transactions involving a foreign entity of concern to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), and publish annual summaries of filed reports; (2) amends section 9 of AFIDA to make formatting changes, incorporate the definition of "foreign entity of concern" from section 9901 of the William M. (Mac) Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (i.e., certain entities owned or controlled by the government of China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea), and add a definition of "malign effort"; and (3) adds a new section 11 of AFIDA that requires USDA to submit to Congress (A) an initial report on implementation progress within 180 days of enactment, (B) a report within 180 days of enactment assessing the feasibility of mechanisms to quantify threats from foreign entities of concern to U.S. food security, biosecurity, food safety, environmental protection, and national defense and to refer certain agricultural land transactions to CFIUS, and (C) annual reports on USDA activities under AFIDA for 10 years beginning one year after enactment.

This section expands the scope of covered transactions under the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to include the purchase, lease, or concession by a foreign entity of concern (as defined in 15 U.S.C. 4651) of private or public real estate in the United States valued over $5 million (or combined with such transactions by the same entity in the prior three years exceeding $5 million) or exceeding 320 acres (or combined exceeding 320 acres), if 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 to CFIUS review factors the potential effects 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 include a list of all U.S. real estate owned by a foreign entity of concern or closely associated person; and (4) directs a report to Congress within 180 days of enactment assessing the feasibility of requiring retroactive divestment of such real estate and describing CFIUS's review process for connections between investments by the People's Republic of China government or controlled entities and the Chinese Communist Party. The amendments apply to any CFIUS review or investigation initiated on or after the date of enactment.

This section requires the Secretaries of Agriculture and Homeland Security to jointly develop, not later than three years after enactment (subject to appropriations), a public database of agricultural land owned by foreign persons using data collected under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA; 7 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.) from FSA-153 forms submitted to the Farm Service Agency and other publicly available sources. (As background, AFIDA requires foreign persons to report acquisitions, transfers, or changes in interests in U.S. agricultural land to USDA within 90 days via FSA-153.) Database entries must include applicable FSA-153 information for each registration or updated registration. Not later than 180 days after public availability and annually thereafter, the AFIDA Chief of Operations for Investigative Actions must audit the database and report to designated congressional committees on its accuracy and recommendations to improve AFIDA reporting compliance. (Thus, the database will digitize and consolidate existing AFIDA reports for public access and oversight.)

This section prohibits any operator or owner who is a foreign person (as defined in the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978, 7 U.S.C. 3508) from participating in Farm Service Agency (FSA) programs, where operator, owner, and participant have the meanings given in 7 C.F.R. 718.2 (as of enactment). (FSA administers farm support programs including commodity, disaster, conservation, and loan programs.) It directs the Secretary of Agriculture to (1) monitor compliance, including by requiring owners or operators to certify they are not foreign persons in FSA applications; (2) impose civil penalties on violators of up to 125% of prohibited benefits received, recoverable in court by the Attorney General, with penalties available without further appropriation for enforcement; and (3) use information from AFIDA and FSA-153 forms for monitoring. It further requires the Secretary to submit an annual report to the appropriate congressional committees describing violations, program savings, compliance actions, penalties imposed, and other enforcement information.

This section authorizes appropriations to carry out this Act and its amendments of (1) $35 million for FY2025, 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 FY2025 through 2029 for all other activities.