USDA Says It Needs Nearly $37 Million to Update Foreign Investment Data Collection

USDA estimates it would need about $36.7 million over five years to create an online system to collect and share information on foreign investment in U.S. farmland, a department spokesperson said Aug. 13.

The figure is “an initial estimate,” the spokesperson said in an email. “Actual costs would depend on a variety of factors, such as project requirements, changes in labor costs, etc.”

Although the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 directed USDA to develop an online filing portal and a public-facing database for reporting foreign purchases of U.S. farmland, no additional funding was provided at the time, the spokesperson said. USDA has instead used its “limited available resources” to begin posting spreadsheets online to present transaction data collected with paper forms.

While the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024 provided $1 million to USDA's Farm Production and Conservation Business Center to improve the reporting system for foreign-owned land (see 2403040061), it also reduced the center’s budget by $4.5 million, leaving it with a net cut from FY 2023, the spokesperson added.

The spokesperson’s comments came after a bipartisan group of 14 senators sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack this week urging USDA to modernize its process for collecting information on foreign investment in U.S. farmland (see 2408130031). The lawmakers said they’re concerned the current process may be creating inaccuracies because it involves using paper forms to collect data and manually entering the information into Farm Service Agency systems.