U.S. Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced the Farmland Security Act of 2025 to the senate floor Feb. 26, which aims to protect farmland from being bought up by foreign investors.

Baldwin, who was selected for her third term in the senate last November, said that the country’s farmland is critical to the health of rural communities and national security.

“But when foreign investors own farmland or our ability to process food, it can put our national security, domestic food supply and local communities at risk,” Baldwin said. “Our bipartisan legislation will help bring to light foreign investments in rural America, so we know who is buying up land critical to all of our safety and the future of our agricultural communities.” 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported in 2023 that foreign ownership of American farmland has reached 45 million acres of land, an 85% jump since 2010.

According to Baldwin and Grassley, the proposed legislation will look to ensure that all foreign investors who buy farmland report their holdings, strengthen penalties for those who evade filing and invest in research to better understand the impact foreign ownership of farmland has on agricultural production.

When they introduced the new bill, the pair of senators said that foreign investments in farmland have the potential to impact food security and national security. Reuters reported in 2020 that exports of U.S. chicken products from Brazilian-owned Pilgrim’s Pride Corp jumped 24%, disrupting domestic food supply during the COVID-19 pandemic. NPR also discovered in 2023 that Chinese companies own 380,000 acres of land in the U.S., mostly near military bases.

The Farmland Security Act of 2025 looks to build on a similar bill from Baldwin and Grassley that was signed into law in 2023 that required the USDA to transition to digital filings of foreign purchases of domestic agricultural land, create a publicly accessible database of foreign ownership data and to report to Congress on the impact these investments have on family farms, rural communities and the domestic food supply.

Grassley said that he will never stop fighting to support family farmers and protect American farmland.

“Foreign purchases of American farmland needlessly increase competition for young and beginning farmers and potentially threaten our national security,” Grassley said. “Family farmers and ranchers have a justified cause for concern. Our commonsense legislation provides the resources needed to monitor these sales and protect against risks they may pose. It also increases penalties for violators, especially shell corporations, who fail to report or misreport their acreage.”

The new bill would require the government to research the effects of foreign ownership of farmland on agricultural production, force the USDA to conduct annual audits on the accuracy of acreage filings and charge overseas investors a 25% fee on the value of the land by failing to report or misrepresenting foreign-owned acreage.

So far, the legislation has been endorsed by the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation and the Wisconsin Farmers Union.

The bill was also introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) and John Moolenaar (R-MI).

Gluesenkamp Perez said that both Democrats and Republicans need to work together to prevent international investors from buying up so much farmland.

“When foreign investors buy up broad swaths of American farm and timberland, we lose control over resources in our own backyard, our cultural identity and self-sufficiency suffers,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “At a time when we import 40% of the fresh fruits and vegetables we consume each day, this bipartisan legislation will help us strengthen our food supply at home and the national security that comes with it.”

 Full text of this legislation is available here and a one-pager on this legislation is available here.