USDA posts new foreign-farmland disclosure form with GIS maps and full ownership charts; comments due Dec. 28

A foreign buyer of farm ground, or the attorney filing for one, would have to open a map on USDA’s online portal and draw a polygon around the tract, then split it by land use, under a revised disclosure form the Department of Agriculture put out for comment Oct. 29^[1]. The form, the AFIDA Report (FSA-153), is how foreign persons tell USDA about the agricultural land they buy, sell, lease or hold^[1]. Comments are due Dec. 28, 2026^[1].

The map is one of a dozen changes. The notice from USDA’s Office of Homeland Security (OHS) lays out, item by item, the questions filers would answer once a pending rewrite of the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) regulations takes effect^[1].

The details: what the revised FSA-153 asks

The notice sorts the changes into three groups: questions consolidated and reordered, questions refined and questions added^[1]. The ones most likely to reach a farm, a landlord or a lender:

• Who must file. Item 1 is renamed “Reportable Activity” and gains a choice for a “Land Holding Newly Reportable under 2026 Update to AFIDA Regulations”^[1]. That box exists because the proposed rule widens the pool of filers to all beneficial owners regardless of stake, any U.S. business with at least 10% foreign interest, any foreign person holding a lease or easement of a year or more, and foreign adversaries holding a lease or easement of any length^[1].
• The full ownership chain. Filers would submit a diagram linking every interest holder. Today they report ownership only to the third tier, and USDA says that gap “often masks the foreign country(ies)” behind a holding^[1]. Every owner would supply a tax ID or foreign passport number, a phone number and an email address^[1].
• Location. New fields ask for the land’s mailing address and its Farm Service Agency (FSA) farm number, if it has one, on top of the legal description and the GIS polygon^[1].
• Leases and loans. A new “Lease or Easement” option asks for the expected expiration date^[1]. Credit purchases would name the loan or mortgage provider and the loan ID^[1].
• Value. USDA drops the question on how much of the purchase price remains unpaid, saying it never used the answers, and adds the most recent tax-assessed value^[1].
• Prior ties. Two new questions ask whether a foreign party had a business relationship with the previous owner, or helped run the operation day to day, before the deal^[1].

USDA expects 5,438 responses a year, 5,000 of them new disclosures, at a total of 5,109.5 hours^[1]. It says about 90% of individual filers already use an attorney^[1].

How did foreign farmland reporting get here?

AFIDA dates to 1978 and requires a report within 90 days of an acquisition or transfer^[2]. The regulations at 7 CFR part 781 were long run by FSA, on a paper form filed at county offices^{[2, 4]}.

Congress and auditors pushed for change. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 gave USDA three years to build electronic filing and an internet database, and the 2024 and 2025 spending laws told USDA to flag likely national-security transactions to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)^[2]. A January 2024 Government Accountability Office report faulted USDA’s collection, tracking and sharing of the data^[2]. The Iowa State University Center for Agricultural Law and Taxation (CALT) counts only eight USDA penalties for late or missing filings from 2012 through 2021^[4].

USDA’s July 2025 National Farm Security Action Plan called for it to “aggressively implement reforms to the AFIDA process”^[2]. An advance notice followed in December 2025, an April 13, 2026 rule moved AFIDA out of FSA, and the proposed rule was published June 25^[2]. Its comment period closed Aug. 10^[2]. USDA’s 2026 regulatory agenda targeted final action in December 2026, as earlier coverage noted^[4].

USDA data through Dec. 31, 2024, put 46 million acres, or 3.6% of private U.S. agricultural land, in some form of foreign ownership or qualifying lease, DTN reported^[3].

In the field: who would have new paperwork

Landlords and tenants. The current rules exempt leases of less than 10 years^[2]. The proposal cuts that to under one year, counting back-to-back leases together, and removes the exemption entirely for foreign adversaries and entities they control^[2]. USDA defines foreign adversaries by reference to a federal statute that names China, North Korea, Russia and Iran^[2]. The legal duty to file rests on the foreign person, but DTN wrote that the change “could essentially shift reporting burdens to farms to vet beneficial owners of any corporate entity renting their acreage”^[3].

Conservation acres and small tracts. Land in conservation that could be used for farming, ranching, forestry or timber would count as agricultural land, and USDA names the Conservation Reserve Program and the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program as examples^[2]. The proposal also drops the exemption for tracts of 10 acres or less that gross no more than $1,000 a year, saying few people qualify for it^[2].

Energy, pipelines and the supply chain. The definition would be organized by industry codes and would include solar and wind generation, pipeline transportation, slaughter and processing plants, farm product warehousing and agricultural research^{[2, 4]}. USDA asked how to value long energy leases whose payments start near zero during development, offering a 50-year project lease as an example^[2].

Agribusinesses with minority foreign investors. Today a U.S. company triggers reporting when foreign persons hold 50% or more in aggregate^{[3, 4]}. The proposal lowers that to 10%, and USDA asked whether 5% would be better^{[2, 3]}. Harrison Pittman, director of the National Agricultural Law Center, told a webinar that the change could reach grain companies, food processors and land investment firms, DTN reported^[3].

Penalties. Late reports now accrue one-tenth of 1% of fair market value a week, up to 25%^[2]. The proposal starts with a $250 charge on day 91, then adds 1.5% every 7 days, or 2.5% for foreign adversaries, to the same 25% cap^[2]. CALT calculates that a foreign adversary would hit the cap within 10 weeks of the first assessment and other filers in about 17, against nearly five years at today’s rate^[4]. Holdings that become reportable only because of the new rule would have 90 days from its effective date to file, and a one-year transition track at 1.5% for everyone^[2].

On the Hill and at USDA: the case for and against

USDA received 21 comments on its advance notice^[2]. Some backed a tougher regime: they said the current penalties do not deter non-reporting, and that foreign adversaries should report leases of any length because most farm leases run year to year^[2]. One said “even short-term control can impact local farmers,” in USDA’s summary^[2].

Three commenters opposed any revisions that would add burden or expand scope^[2]. Others argued AFIDA is a disclosure law that was never meant for stiff enforcement, that many filers are small landowners and family businesses posing little security risk, and that enforcement should focus on foreign adversaries^[2]. Some objected to sharing AFIDA data with other agencies^[2].

USDA answered that the disclosure-only reading “runs counter to a plain reading of the statute”^[2]. It added, “We do not believe we can bifurcate enforcement actions based on the size of the entity,” and said its appeal process lets filers lay out extenuating circumstances^[2]. The department certified that the rule would not have a significant impact on a substantial number of small entities, while asking for cost data^[2].

Energy developers have been among the critics. Fredrikson & Byron, a Midwest law firm, wrote in September that industry response “has been largely critical, with renewable energy and pipeline groups arguing it could chill foreign investment in U.S. projects and that the USDA may be exceeding its authority under AFIDA”^[5]. Pittman, by contrast, called the rewrite “a landmark change” and said USDA and CFIUS would share data “more than they ever have”^[3].

Congress is writing its own version. The House farm bill, H.R. 7567, passed April 30 with an AFIDA subtitle that adds a 5% penalty floor for knowing violations and directs federal agencies to bar foreign adversaries from buying farmland^[4]. The Senate Agriculture Committee’s draft would write a lease trigger of more than five years into the statute^[4]. CALT notes that a later statute would override an inconsistent regulation, putting the rule’s one-year lease line at risk if the Senate language becomes law^[4].

What to watch: Dec. 28 and the final rule

Comments on the form are due Dec. 28^[1]. USDA says this is “a rule effectuated Paperwork Reduction Act process,” so “any changes made to the final rule based on public comment will be reflected in the final form”^[1]. The final rule itself has not been published, and USDA has not said when the new reporting duties would take effect.

Which lease length ends up in the regulation, one year under USDA’s proposal or five years under the Senate draft, remains open^{[2, 4]}.