Understanding Foreign Ownership of Agricultural Land Trends within the United States

The percent of foreign owned agricultural land in the United States is approximately 1.6 percent of all privately held agricultural land.  This overall percent represents a significant increase over the approximately 1 percent of privately held land owned by foreign entities in 2004.  The percent of foreign owned land varies by state with the highest concentration of foreign ownership occurring in excess of 2.0 percent of privately held land within some states along the west and southern coastline.  

Foreign owned agricultural land statistics were first made available in 1978 in compliance with the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act.  Some of the initial concerns prompting the enactment of the AFIDA do not seem to have materialized. For example,  the threat to national security, the likelihood of less intensive land use, less factor income and therefore taxable income, and land speculation have not been generally supported by the data in the ensuing years. 

 No consistent correlation seems to exist between foreign owned agricultural land within a state and the primary agricultural exports of that state to the foreign country that dominates ownership within the state.  Additionally, our largest trading partners are not necessarily our largest foreign agricultural land holders. The agricultural sector is fiercely competitive.  Foreign direct investment in the agricultural sector seems to lag behind other commercial sectors.   

 The spike in foreign owned agricultural land ownership within the United States may have more to do with the decline of the foreign exchange value of the dollar or the investment of foreign exchange reserves toward real property rather than securing foreign resources to meet the derived demand of domestic consumption within the home country of land ownership.