Ernst Celebrates Transparency to Crack Down on Foreign-Owned Farmland

WASHINGTON - Following extensive advocacy from U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched a new online portal for reporting foreign-owned agricultural land transactions.

Ernst's FARMLAND Act called for the creation of a portal to modernize the existing Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act(AFIDA) reporting system, replacing an outdated and error-prone process that has left U.S. farmland vulnerable to foreign adversaries.

"After the Biden administration refused to streamline this process and protect one of our most valuable resources from adversaries abroad, I'm thrilled that President Trump's team at the USDA has taken my warnings about foreign ownership of our farmland seriously," said Senator Ernst. "This portal is a critical step forward in overhauling the current outdated system, and Congress must build on this momentum by passing my FARMLAND Act to ensure it is up and running for years to come. Americans deserve to know what foreign adversaries could be lurking in their own backyards!"

The new online system, available at afida.landmark.usda.gov, gathers the same information found on the current form FSA-153 - modernizing a process that, until today, required physical mail submission and manual data entry by USDA staff.

Background:

Ernst understands that food security is national security. Her bipartisan FARMLAND Act would make this online portal permanent in addition to requiring all physical forms be added to the system in an online and publicly accessible format.

Ernst confronted the Biden USDA about its lack of oversight of foreign involvement in American agricultural land and questioned officials to ensure they make updates to the AFIDA reporting process a priority.

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