S. 845 · Where this bill is now
In committee
Introduced in the Senate, Mar 4, 2025
What this bill does
In plain words · AI-written from the official summaryIncreases penalties for foreign farmland investment violations
Currently, when foreign investors break rules about reporting their purchases of U.S. agricultural land, the financial penalties are capped at 25% of the land's value. This bill removes that cap, letting the Department of Agriculture set higher penalties when violations occur. It also sets a much stricter penalty—100% of the land's value—for foreign-owned shell corporations (companies with little to no real operations) that don't properly report their farmland holdings, though they have a 60-day window to fix filing mistakes. Beyond penalties, the bill requires the USDA to audit at least 10% of foreign investment reports each year, train state and local officials on enforcement, and research trends in foreign farmland purchases.
How it affects you
Most Americans won't directly encounter this bill in daily life. It mainly affects foreign investors and companies that purchase U.S. farmland, making it costlier and riskier for them to hide their holdings or use shell corporations to obscure ownership. State and county agricultural officials will have new training requirements to help enforce these rules. The USDA will spend more resources on audits and research to track foreign investment in American farmland.
Read the official summary (Introduced in Senate, Mar 4, 2025)
Farmland Security Act of 2025
This bill authorizes increased civil penalties for violations of the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA) and increases Department of Agriculture (USDA) oversight of and research into foreign investment in agricultural land. As background, AFIDA and the regulations that implemented the act require foreign investors who acquire, transfer, or hold an interest in U.S. agricultural land to report such holdings and transactions to USDA.
In general, the bill allows USDA to determine an appropriate civil penalty amount for an AFIDA violation by removing the cap that currently prohibits the civil penalty from exceeding 25% of the fair market value of the interest in the agricultural land associated with the violation.
Under an exception in the bill, the civil penalty for a foreign-owned shell corporation is 100% of the fair market value of the interest in the agricultural land. The bill defines a shell corporation to include a company, association, firm, partnership, society, joint stock company, trust, or estate that has no or nominal operations. The penalty does not apply if the shell corporation remedies a defective filing or failure to file within 60 days of USDA providing notice.
USDA must conduct annual compliance audits of at least 10% of the reports. Further, USDA must provide state and county-level personnel certain annual training.
USDA must also annually conduct research and submit a report to Congress on foreign investment in agricultural land, including trends in the purchase of U.S. agricultural land by foreign-owned shell corporations.
Written by AI (Claude) using only the official summary by the Congressional Research Service, the Library of Congress’s nonpartisan research staff. It can miss nuance, so check the official summary and the bill text for details.
1st SessionS. 845
A BILL
Farmland Security Act of 2025
Sponsor: Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) · Introduced Mar 4, 2025 · Agriculture and Food · 1 version of the text
Sources: Congress.gov actions and votes · bill text from GovInfo · latest official action Mar 4, 2025: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.”