Federal Agencies in the Dark About China’s US Farmland Purchase, New Report Reveals

Federal agencies don’t have reliable information on China buying U.S. farmland due to “flawed” data collection and reporting processes, a new government report finds. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) needs to move away from its manual, paper-form-based foreign farmland purchase data collection process and share the information with other agencies more timely than once a year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report released on Jan. 18. In addition, the USDA is required by law to create an online filing process and database of foreign agricultural land ownership by the end of 2025. However, according to the GAO findings, it has no plans and timelines to do so....