Items Tagged with 'foreign land ownership'

Foreign investors owned 3.5% of America's farm, ranch, and forest land in 2023, a 1.5-million acre increase from the year prior, according to a new Agriculture Department report.

The House advanced legislation Wednesday that would increase oversight of farmland purchases by investors from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. 

President Biden used his State of the Union address to take on food companies while claiming credit for stabilizing farms with his economic policy.

USDA staff fail to “sufficiently verify” the accuracy of foreign land ownership data and are slow to share information on those landholdings with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the Government Accountability Office says in a long-awaited audit. 

The average age of farmers today is 58, setting up a need to adopt new government policies to attract and retain new farmers and protect the agricultural industry’s ability to meet growing world food needs.

The Agriculture Department is working to update its system for tracking agricultural land leases and purchases to appease lawmaker demands, but staffing and funding limitations have limited the agency to "low-cost" options, a department official told the Senate Agriculture Committee on Wednesday. 

House GOP appropriators proposed Wednesday to slash fiscal 2024 funding for USDA by one-third, in part by eliminating some climate-related funding, restricting Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s use of the Commodity Credit Corp. spending authority and expanding work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.