On July 8, 2025, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced the National Farm Security Action Plan, a component of the administration’s “Make Agriculture Great Again” initiative. The plan frames American agriculture as central to U.S. national security and includes provisions to address foreign ownership of farmland, agroterrorism risks, cyber threats to the food system, and vulnerabilities in ag research and infrastructure.

Joined by the Secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice, the announcement emphasized threats posed by adversarial nations (including recent federal charges involving the smuggling of a crop-damaging fungus) while calling for increased transparency, stronger land protections, and enhanced interagency coordination. The plan places heightened attention on foreign involvement in U.S. agriculture and may indicate forthcoming executive action to further regulate land ownership by foreign entities.

Sam Kieffer, vice president of public policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), said the plan covers a wide swath of issues.

“Well, it's a seven-part plan for addressing agriculture security, and it includes limiting ownership of American farmland by adversaries of the United States,” Keiffer said. “Also involves enhancing supply chain resilience and safeguarding both plant and animal health.”

According to USDA, the National Farm Security Action Plan takes aggressive action across seven critical areas.

  1. Secure and Protect American Farmland – Address U.S. foreign farmland ownership from adversaries head on. Total transparency. Tougher penalties.
  2. Enhance Agricultural Supply Chain Resilience – Refocus domestic investment into key manufacturing sectors and identify non-adversarial partners to work with when domestic production is not available. Plan for contingencies.
  3. Protect U.S. Nutrition Safety Net from Fraud and Foreign Exploitation – Billions have been stolen by foreign crime rings. That ends now.
  4. Defend Agricultural Research and Innovation – No more sweetheart deals or secret pacts with hostile nations. American ideas stay in America.
  5. Put America First in Every USDA Program – From farm loans to food safety, every program will reflect the America First agenda.
  6. Safeguard Plant and Animal Health – Crack down on bio-threats before they ever reach our soil.
  7. Protect Critical Infrastructure – Farms, food, and supply chains are national security assets—and will be treated as such.

“Limiting foreign ownership is part of ensuring our food supply is secure, but this issue also crosses into private property rights, agriculture research, and innovation. Our farmers and ranchers strongly support the freedom for farmers to develop, invest in, or sell land depending on their independent needs, while respecting national security,” said ValJay Rigby, President of the Utah Farm Bureau Federation. “Current data collection and reporting on foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land is flawed and should be improved to enable informed policymaking.”

While improvements in data collection are needed, the latest USDA data indicates the percentage of foreign-owned agricultural land is low at around 3%. Most of this investment is done by limited liability companies and corporations, including public pension funds and life insurance companies.

Canada owns the largest percentage of land at almost 13 million acres, which is almost one-third of all foreign-owned agricultural land. Most of that land is used for timber. China is ranked 18th in the ownership of U.S. ag land with 383,000 acres. That represents less than half of 1% of all agricultural land in the United States. While the largest percentage of this is associated with land purchased for a wind farm project in Texas, which was ultimately halted, the next largest contingent was from a Virginia-based U.S. pork processing company that was acquired by a Chinese-owned firm in 2013. These properties accounted for more than 146,000 acres of U.S. agricultural land spread across nine different states, including 33,500 acres in Utah. Even these last numbers are not current, since the hog company largely pulled operations out of Utah recently.

While we do appreciate the data that is known, the Utah Farm Bureau supports additional funding to improve data collection, auditing techniques and enforcement of reporting under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA). We also support the bipartisan AFIDA Improvements Act of 2024, which would provide more transparency in foreign land ownership.

Utah Farm Bureau is also pleased that the Secretary of Agriculture has been added to the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS), which investigates and approves mergers and acquisitions of U.S. businesses by foreign investors. Members include representatives from the departments of Treasury, Homeland Security and Commerce, and the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

“It’s logical that the Secretary of Agriculture has a seat on CFIUS,” AFBF’s Kieffer added. “They investigate and consider and approve or disapprove any U.S. business merging with or being acquired by foreign investors. So, it only makes sense that the Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture also serve in that capacity. This is a positive step towards managing who contributes to our food supply chain.

More information can be found from the USDA news release, here.

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Nations with investments into U.S. agricultural land
  • Canada 31% (12.8 million acres)
  • Netherlands 0.21% (2.7 million acres)
  • Italy 0.37% (4.9 million acres)
  • The United Kingdom 0.19% (2.5 million acres)
  • Germany 0.17% (2.3 million acres)
  • Portugal .11%
  • France .10%
  • Denmark .07%
  • Luxembourg .06%
  • Ireland .06%
  • Japan .05%
  • Cayman Islands .05%
  • Sweden .05%
  • Switzerland .05%
  • Mexico .05%
  • China .03%