Washington, D.C. - As committed to un‑der USDA’s National Farm Security Action Plan (PDF, 1.2 MB) U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins an‑nounced a number of coordinated actions to continue to emphasize American agricultural research and innovation by ensuring ideas stay in America or among our allies, not with hos‑tile nations and that we are putting American farmers and ranchers first in every USDA pro‑gram, period. These historic ac‑tions strengthen trans‑parency around foreign ownership of U.S. ag‑ricultural land and en‑sure federal programs and purchasing prefer‑ences do not support supply chains con‑trolled by foreign ad‑versaries. The actions include opening up an Advanced Notice of Pro‑posed Rulemaking (AN‑PRM) on the Agricultur‑al Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) to allow the public an opportunity to com‑ment as USDA moves to improve the regulation and strengthening the implementation of US‑DA’s BioPreferred Pro‑gram to ensure federal programs and purchas‑ing preferences priori‑tize American produc‑ers and manufacturers and rid out foreign ad‑versaries.
“Strengthening na‑tional security starts with knowing who owns our farmland and where federal dollars are flow‑ing,” said Secretary Rollins. “These actions close long-standing gaps in oversight and enforcement by im‑proving transparency around foreign land ownership and ensur‑ing USDA programs support American farm‑ers and manufactur‑ers, while prioritizing domestic supply chains – not foreign adversar‑ies.”
AFIDA requires for‑eign investors who ac‑quire, transfer, or hold an interest in U.S. ag‑ricultural land to re‑port such holdings and transactions to the U.S. Department of Agricul‑ture (USDA). USDA’s National Farm Security Action Plan (PDF, 1.2 MB) calls for aggres‑sive implementation of reforms to the AFIDA process including im‑proved verification and monitoring of collected AFIDA data.
USDA seeks input on potential regulatory or other changes that may improve the effi‑ciency and effectiveness of its AFIDA reporting and filing requirements which will result in im‑proved tracking of for‑eign adversary agricul‑tural land purchases to the public and will fur‑ther enhance USDA’s Memorandum of Under‑standing (MOU) (PDF, 164 KB) with Treasury which memorializes cooperation on CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the Unit‑ed States) cases involv‑ing the transfer of agri‑cultural land.
Foreign adversary linked entities currently control at least 277,000 acres of agricultur‑al land in the United States. Each acre rep‑resents a threat to our food supply chains, a vector for agroterrorism, and a potential platform for surveillance and sabotage of our military bases and critical infra‑structure. BioPreferred Pro‑gram Updates
USDA will advance the Administration’s efforts to end marketdistorting subsidies for unreliable, foreign-con‑trolled energy sources and strengthen domes‑tic supply chains by up‑dating the BioPreferred and Guaranteed Lend‑ing Programs, consis‑tent with USDA’s Na‑tional Farm Security Action Plan, to protect the integrity of federal purchasing and ensure American producers come first.
The BioPreferred Program supports do‑mestic manufacturing, increases the purchase and use of U.S. bio‑based products to spur economic development, create new jobs and open new domestic mar‑kets for crops grown by American farmers and producers. Moving for‑ward and effective im‑mediately entities and products from foreign adversary countries are no longer eligible for the BioPreferred Program or USDA guaranteed lend‑ing programs. Current participants must com‑ply with audits or risk removal.
The USDA BioPre‑ferred Program is cur‑rently funded through September 30, 2026.
Taken together, these actions reiterate USDA’s historic com‑mitment to American agriculture as a key el‑ement of our nation’s national security, ad‑dressing urgent threats from foreign adversar‑ies and strengthening the resilience of our na‑tion’s food and agricul‑tural systems.
