Proposed revisions to the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act: Key developments and implications

Overview

On December 29, 2025, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Notice) seeking public comment on potential revisions to the regulations implementing the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA).¹

The Notice follows a January 2024 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that identified deficiencies in USDA's AFIDA processes, including failures to timely share data with Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) member agencies and inadequate verification and monitoring of collected data.²

The Notice reflects heightened national security concerns regarding foreign ownership of US agricultural land. The USDA will consider comments to develop regulatory changes addressing such national security concerns. Public comments in response to the Notice must be received by January 28, 2026.

Background
AFIDA requires “foreign persons” that acquire, transfer, or hold interests in US agricultural land to report such transactions and holdings to the Farm Service Agency (FSA) through Form FSA-153.³ The implementing regulations of AFIDA, codified at 7 CFR Part 781, were last updated in 2006. Since that time, according to the USDA, foreign holdings of US agricultural land have increased significantly.

Among other requirements under AFIDA, an AFIDA report must be filed within 90 days of any of the following events: (1) the acquisition or transfer by a foreign person of an interest in US agricultural land; (2) a change in use of US land held by a foreign person that causes it to become agricultural land; or (3) a change in the status of a person that holds or acquires an interest in US agricultural land that causes them to become a foreign person. 

Failure to make the required disclosures can result in substantial civil penalties. For late filed reports, AFIDA authorizes the assessment of civil penalties, which accrue weekly at 0.1% of the fair market value of the foreign person’s interest in the land, up to 25%. The failure to make an initial report, update a report, or filing a report with incomplete or misleading information may result in civil penalties of 25% of the foreign person’s interest in the land. 

Key Areas Under Consideration

The Notice states that the USDA is receptive to changes both within current statutory authority and those that may require new or revised statutory authority. The Notice identifies three primary categories of potential regulatory changes on which USDA is soliciting public input:

Topic 1. Identification of Foreign Persons Required to File

The USDA requests input on foreign persons that are required to file AFIDA reports, including whether the existing definitions of “agricultural land,” “any interest,” and “foreign person” remain sufficient, and whether foreign persons from countries designated as foreign adversaries should be subject to different reporting standards. 

Under current regulations, a “foreign person,” broadly defined, includes foreign governments, entities organized under foreign law or with principal places of business outside the United States, non-citizen individuals, and domestic entities in which such foreign persons hold “significant interest or substantial control.”

Topic 2. Information Required About Agricultural Land

USDA has acknowledged that requirements for the identification of agricultural land may have limited use and that the agency lacks the information necessary to create geospatial maps with property boundaries. The USDA seeks input on whether additional information or documentation should be required beyond the current AFIDA reporting requirements, and how the USDA can best obtain correct, verifiable descriptions or geospatial mapping of agricultural land.

Topic 3. Information About Indirect Foreign Interest Holders

The current AFIDA regulations only require the identification of foreign persons that are one or two tiers above the direct interest holder of US agricultural land in an ownership chain. The USDA seeks comment on what information should be required about interest holders that are multiple steps removed from the direct interest holder or part of complex organizational structures, and how the USDA can ensure such information is complete and accurate.

Comment Period and Next Steps

Comments must be submitted by January 28, 2026, via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov under Docket ID: FSA-2024-0005. All comments will be publicly available in that portal.

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If you have any questions about this Legal Briefing, please feel free to contact any of the attorneys listed or the Eversheds Sutherland attorney with whom you regularly work.

_{1 Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act: Revisions to Reporting Requirements, 90 Fed. Reg. 60581(December 29, 2025). Available as of the date of this alert at Federal Register: Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act: Revisions to Reporting Requirements.}

_{2 Foreign Investments in US Agricultural Land: Enhancing Efforts to Collect, Track, and Share Key Information Could Better Identify National Security Risks (January 2024). Available as of the date of this alert at GAO-24-106337, FOREIGN INVESTMENTS IN US AGRICULTURAL LAND: Enhancing Efforts to Collect, Track, and Share Key Information Could Better Identify National Security Risks.}

_{3 The current form as of the date of this alert is available at https://forms.sc.egov.usda.gov/efcommon/eFileServices/eForms/FSA153.PDF.}