USDA AFIDA disclosures · 2010–2024 · county by county

Who owns American farmland — from somewhere else

Foreign investors report holding 47.2 million acres of U.S. agricultural land — nearly double 2010, spread across 2,559 counties. Before you repeat a headline: the biggest holder is Canada, not China, and nearly half of it is forest, not corn ground. Every number below comes from USDA’s own disclosure files, unedited.

Foreign-held agricultural acres, by county

47,241,820 acres of U.S. agricultural land held by foreign investors as of Dec 31, 2024 · 2,559 counties · up from 24,841,588 acres in 2010 · largest holder country: Canada · 47% of the acreage is forest land · source: USDA FSA AFIDA disclosure filings · page data refreshed 2026-07-18

Tap any county. Dark counties report little or no foreign-held land; that can mean none exists or none was disclosed — AFIDA is a self-reporting law, and this page will not pretend otherwise.

This county
—
Holder countries (latest year)
What kind of land
The national trend — 2010 to 2024
Foreign-held, 2024
—
acres reported under AFIDA
Since 2010
—
from 24.8M acres — a near-doubling
#1 holder country
—
not the one the headlines lead with
Share that is forest
—
much of it corporate timberland

Gaps at 2015 and 2021: USDA’s downloadable detail files skip those years. The line breaks rather than pretends.

Two tables worth arguing about
Top counties by foreign-held acres (2024)
Holder countries, national (2024)
What this data is — and is not. AFIDA is a federal disclosure law: foreign persons and entities must report U.S. agricultural land holdings, including leases of 10+ years. It is self-reported — real filings, but only as complete as compliance, and USDA’s GAO auditors have flagged gaps. Acreage here is summed exactly the way USDA’s own annual report sums it. County percentages of total farmland are deliberately not shown yet — they need a matching county denominator done carefully, and a wrong percentage is worse than none. This page shows disclosed holdings, says so, and links the raw source below.
Questions people actually ask
How much American farmland does China own?

Far less than the discourse suggests: China is not among the top holders in the AFIDA files — Canada and European countries dominate. Chinese-connected holdings exist and are politically sensitive (several states have restricted them), but by acreage they are a small slice. Since 2023 the filings even carry specific flags for secondary interests from China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea.

Is 47 million acres a lot?

It is about 3–4% of U.S. agricultural land — and it has nearly doubled since 2010, which is the more important number. A share that small still makes it among the fastest-growing categories of farmland ownership.

Why is so much of it forest?

Because global timber companies and investment funds own large tracts of U.S. timberland, and forest counts as agricultural land under AFIDA. Roughly 22 of the 47 million acres are forest — the single biggest reason raw AFIDA totals get misread as "foreign corn ground."

My county shows nothing — does that mean no foreign ownership?

It means no disclosed holdings. AFIDA relies on self-reporting with civil penalties for failure to file; federal auditors have found compliance gaps. Absence of a filing is evidence, not proof.

Where can I get the raw data?

USDA FSA publishes the detailed holdings files annually — linked below. This page aggregates them with an open-source script and changes nothing.

Source

USDA Farm Service Agency, Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) detailed holdings files, 2010–2024, via fsa.usda.gov. Aggregation script: scripts/process_afida.py in the AGSIST repository — row-sums match USDA’s published annual totals. USDA also hosts its own ArcGIS dashboard. Data years 2015 and 2021 are not in USDA’s downloadable file set. Page data refreshed 2026-07-18; AFIDA updates annually.