Grassley, Baldwin Introduce Legislation to Crack Down on Foreign Investment in Farmland, Protect Rural Communities

Foreign ownership of American farmland has increased85 percentsince 2010
WASHINGTON– Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) introduced theFarmland Security Act of 2025to build on their work to safeguard rural communities and protect American farmland from shady foreign investments.
The bipartisan legislation builds on a Grassley-Baldwin law to ensure that all foreign investors, including “shell companies,” who buy American agricultural land report their holdings. It additionally strengthens penalties for those who evade filing and invests in research to better understand the impact foreign ownership of farmland has on agricultural production capacity.
“Foreign purchases of American farmland needlessly increase competition for young and beginning farmers and potentially threaten our national security. Family farmers and ranchers have a justified cause for concern. Our commonsense legislation provides the resources needed to monitor these sales and protect against risks they may pose. It also increases penalties for violators, especially shell corporations, who fail to report or misreport their acreage. I’ll never stop fighting to support family farmers and protect our farmland,”Grassley said.
“America’s farmland is critical to the health of our rural communities and our national security. But when foreign investors own farmland or our ability to process food, it can put our national security, domestic food supply, and local communities at risk. Our bipartisan legislation will help bring to light foreign investments in rural America, so we know who is buying up land critical to all of our safety and the future of our agricultural communities,”Baldwin said.
Background:
According to the Department of Agriculture (USDA), approximately 45 million acres of American agricultural land is under foreign ownership – and85 percentincrease since 2010. These investments have the potential toimpactAmerica’s food security and national security.
As a then-member of the House of Representatives, Grassley helped author the first reporting requirements to ever address foreign ownership of farmland – the 1978Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Actalso directed the USDA Secretary to analyze the information and determine the effects of foreign transactions and holdings on family farms and rural communities.
The Grassley-BaldwinFarmland Security Act of 2022, which was signed into law as part of funding legislation for 2023, imposed requirements for USDA to create digital filings tracking foreign purchases of domestic agricultural land and establish a publicly accessible database of certain disaggregated foreign ownership data for research purposes. It also requires USDA to report to Congress on the impact these investments have on family farms, rural communities and the domestic food supply.
TheFarmland Security Act of 2025takes additional steps to support transparency and better understand the scale and impact of foreign ownership by:
Companion legislation was introduced in the House of Representatives by Reps. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.).
Full bill text isHERE. A one-pager on the legislation is availableHERE.
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