Protecting America’s Agricultural Land from Foreign Harm Act of 2025

Current understanding

Introduced legislation that would prohibit persons owned, controlled, or directed by the governments of China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea from purchasing or leasing U.S. public or private agricultural land and from participating in most USDA programs. The bill also expands AFIDA reporting to explicitly cover security interests and leases, broadening the existing foreign agricultural land disclosure regime. Status: introduced; no enforcement effects yet on importers, exporters, or consumer prices, though passage would restrict a defined class of foreign buyers/lessees and could affect land markets in agricultural regions.

Evidence log

• 2025-03-28 — FARMLAND Act of 2025: cross-connection with farmland-act-2025: Complementary approaches to foreign ag land: FARMLAND Act adds CFIUS thresholds, AFIDA enforcement, and an interagency database, while the Foreign Harm Act imposes categorical purchase/lease bans on adversary-linked persons. (novelty: 3)
• 2025-03-12 — SOIL Act of 2025: cross-connection with soil-act-2025: Overlapping legislative tracks scoping AFIDA expansion (leases, adversary focus) and USDA program bars; SOIL adds CFIUS review authority as the enforcement lever. (novelty: 3)
• 2025-03-06 — PASS Act: cross-connection with pass-act-foreign-adversary-agricultural-land: Both target China/Russia/Iran/DPRK acquisitions of U.S. agricultural land; PASS Act narrows its land ban to parcels near sensitive military or national-security sites and additionally covers control of ag companies. (novelty: 3)
• 2025-02-18 — Protecting America’s Agricultural Land from Foreign Harm Act of 2025: cross-connection with foreign-agricultural-land-national-security: Bill operationalizes national-security concerns about foreign agricultural land ownership by imposing covered-country purchase/lease bans and USDA program bars. (novelty: 3)

Open questions

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