As committed to under U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Farm Security Action Plan, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins recently announced 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 hostile nations, putting American farmers and ranchers first in every USDA program.
These historic actions strengthen transparency around foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land and ensure federal programs and purchasing preferences do not support supply chains controlled by foreign adversaries.
The actions include opening up an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) on the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA); allowing the public an opportunity to comment as USDA moves to improve the regulation and strengthening the implementation of USDA’s BioPreferred Program to ensure federal programs and purchasing preferences prioritize American producers and manufacturers and rid out foreign adversaries.
AFIDA requires foreign investors who acquire, transfer, or hold an interest in U.S. agricultural land to report such holdings and transactions to the USDA. The USDA’s National Farm Security Action Plan calls for aggressive implementation of reforms to the AFIDA process including improved verification and monitoring of collected AFIDA data.
The USDA is seeking input on potential regulatory or other changes that may improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its AFIDA reporting and filing requirements which will result in improved tracking of foreign adversary agricultural land purchases to the public and will further enhance USDA’s Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Treasury which memorializes cooperation on CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) cases involving the transfer of agricultural land.
The USDA will advance the Administration’s efforts to end market-distorting subsidies for unreliable, foreign-controlled energy sources and strengthen domestic supply chains by updating the BioPreferred and Guaranteed Lending Programs, consistent with USDA’s National Farm Security Action Plan, to protect the integrity of federal purchasing and ensure American producers come first.
The BioPreferred Program supports domestic manufacturing, increases the purchase and use of U.S. biobased products to spur economic development, create new jobs and open new domestic markets for crops grown by American farmers and producers.
Moving forward and effective immediately entities and products from foreign adversary countries are no longer eligible for the BioPreferred Program or USDA guaranteed lending programs. Current participants must comply with audits or risk removal.
The USDA BioPreferred Program is currently funded through September 30, 2026.
You must be logged in to post a comment.