A new report from the Government Accountability Office looked at the US Department of Agriculture system for assessing foreign ownership of US farmland. GAO wrote that USDA needs to better collect, track, and share the data: USDA currently compiles its data annually from paper forms filed with headquarters or county offices. Foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land, the report noted, has increased by 40 percent since 2016. Members of Congress are especially concerned about ownership of agricultural land by citizens of China or Russia, and even more so when such farmland is located near U.S. defense facilities. Information about such purchases is generally forwarded to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., but manual systems are more prone to potential errors than a real-time, accessible system. GAO recommended that USDA improve its data collection by developing a real-time data system that can be accessed by other agencies.
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