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USDA: Foreign Interests Own More U.S. Farmland

The USDA's Farm Service Agency (FSA) recently reported that foreign holdings of U.S. agricultural land increased by 1.4 million acres in 2007. The publication contains statistics through Feb. 28, 2008, regarding the 20.9 million acres of U.S. agricultural land in which foreign persons hold an interest.

Foreigners have an interest—partial or outright ownership—in 1.6 percent of all privately held U.S. agricultural land and 0.92 percent of all land in the United States, USDA reports.

The report contains statistics on the 20.9 million acres of U.S. agricultural land in which foreign persons held an interest through Feb. 28, 2008. The total is a 1.4 million acre increase from 2007.

The report includes a wide variety of figures and statistics, including:

• A breakdown of land held by foreigners by the type of acreage: forest land, 58 percent; cropland, 13 percent; pasture and other agricultural land, 26 percent.

• Which countries have foreigners holding the largest amount of land: Canadians hold the largest amount of land with almost 7.3 million acres, or 34 percent.

• People from these three countries collectively hold more than 6.7 million acres, or 31 percent of the foreign held acres in the U.S.: Netherlands, almost 3.9 million acres (18 percent); United Kingdom, over 1.5 million acres (7 percent); and Germany, almost 1.4 million acres (6 percent).

Maine has the largest amount of foreign-held U.S. agricultural land at 3.35 million acres, or 18.7 percent of the privately-held agricultural land in the state. Texas has the second largest amount of foreign held acreage — 2,111,859 acres — but that only represents a little more than one percent of the privately held agricultural land in Texas.

In Hawaii, 8.8 percent of private agricultural land is foreign- held. Washington (7.2 percent), Nevada (5.2 percent), and Alabama (5.1 percent) have the next largest proportions of foreign-held land.

The publications findings are based on reports submitted in compliance with the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 (AFIDA).