Senators flag USDA’s failures in tracking foreign-owned farmland

A bipartisan group of 14 senators is warning about possible inaccuracies in the government’s tracking of foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land, and are urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fix the problem.

They pointed out concerns over the accuracy of information made in disclosures under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act, a decades-old law that requires foreign investors who buy, transfer, or hold an interest in U.S. agricultural land to report those transactions to the government.

Those disclosures are used to track and identify transactions that possibly pose national security risks such as Chinese investors trying to buy up land in the vicinity of U.S. military bases.

The 14 senators, led by Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, said in a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack on Monday that the Farm Service Administration’s public posting of the data could be riddled with inaccuracies because the disclosures are still filled out and copied into the database by hand.

Currently, AFIDA disclosures are filed and collected at local FSA offices throughout the country.

“The current practice of manual data entry, including the re-typing of paper-filed reports into FSA systems, can lead to the publication of problematic and inaccurate information,” the lawmakers wrote. “We’re told there have been instances where energy developers have been incorrectly identified as having ownership interests from sanctioned nations, when in reality the investment originates from U.S. allies.”

“If true, such errors not only create confusion but also undermine the credibility of the data published by the FSA,” they said.

They also said that a mandate in one of the two colossal government funding packages Congress passed earlier this year required the USDA to develop a more streamlined process for electronic submission and retention of the disclosures.

The USDA said in a disclaimer online that “inaccuracies may include a number of causes, including human errors such as typographical errors when data from hard copy paper filings is manually entered into the AFIDA database.”

The agency said in a statement to The Washington Times that the spending bill “failed to provide sufficient funding” to modernize the program and hire additional staff to make it work there has not been enough money funneled to the agency to meet the lawmakers’ request.

Indeed, the massive spending bill allocated about $1 million to the agency to implement an online filing portal and public database for AFIDA disclosures, but also slashed the agency’s budget by about $4.5 million.

The USDA projected that developing a new web portal that included disclosures from years past could cost up to $36.7 million over the next five years.

“USDA will continue working to make improvements through regulatory and administrative updates as much as possible using the relatively low funding and authority provided,” a spokesperson for the agency said.

Foreign ownership of farmland, particularly from Chinese investors, is a growing concern.

The Government Accountability Office in January reported that foreign investment in U.S. agricultural land grew to about 40 million acres in 2021 and said it posed “national security risks — such as when foreign interests buy land near U.S. military installations.”

Indeed, China’s purchases and attempted purchases of farmland in the vicinity of dozens of military bases throughout the country sparked significant national security concerns, particularly over fears that Chinese landowners could establish surveillance operations under the auspices of farming.

The GAO’s report also noted that the USDA did not share timely data on foreign investments in agricultural land collected under the disclosures, and only published the AFIDA data online once a year.

That information can be used by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to identify and review transactions that potentially pose national security risks.