USDA AFIDA disclosures · 2010–2024 · county by county
Who owns American farmland from abroad
USDA counts 46.3 million acres of U.S. agricultural land held by foreign investors at the end of 2024, 3.6% of privately held agricultural land, and nearly double 2010, spread across 2,559 counties. The biggest holder is Canada, not China, and nearly half of it is forest, not corn ground. Every number below comes from USDA’s disclosure files.
China: 247,659 acres, 0.5% of foreign-held acres (USDA AFIDA, Dec 31, 2024). Who is behind it: 2.9 million of the 47.2 million acres in USDA’s detail files (6.2%) name no foreign country (USDA codes 998 and 999). The files also say which holdings are owned and which are leases of 10 years or more. We have not added up that split yet, so there is no owned-outright number here; farmdoc daily (Sep 23, 2026) has one.
By Sigurd Lindquist, CCA · USDA AFIDA filings through Dec 31, 2024
46.3 million acres of U.S. agricultural land held by foreign investors as of Dec 31, 2024 (USDA AFIDA report) · the detail file’s rows sum to 47,241,820, and the county and country figures here use the rows · 2,559 counties · up from 24,841,588 row-summed 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. Counties at the low end of the scale, or marked none reported, hold little or no disclosed foreign land; that can mean none exists or none was disclosed: AFIDA is a self-reporting law, so a blank county is not proof of anything.
The same county layer sits in the Farmland Atlas, beside each county’s rent, land value and risk record.
Gaps at 2015 and 2021: USDA’s downloadable detail files skip those years, so the line breaks there instead of guessing across the gap. In some counties 2022 is a one-year jump that falls back in 2023: Autauga County, AL reports 61,371 acres in 2020, 104,884 in 2022 and 58,741 in 2023. The files do not say why.
How much American farmland does China own?
Not much: 247,659 acres at the end of 2024, about 0.5% of the foreign-held acres in USDA's AFIDA detail files (our sum of the rows; Hong Kong is listed on its own, 144,090 acres). Canada holds 16.1 million. Chinese-connected holdings are politically sensitive and several states have restricted them, but by acreage they are a small slice. Since 2023 the filings carry specific flags for secondary interests from China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea.
Is 46 million acres a lot?
USDA puts it at 3.6% of privately held agricultural land. In USDA’s detail files it has nearly doubled since 2010, from 24.8 million row-summed acres to 47.2 million, and that growth is the more important number. About 22 million of the 47 million acres are forest.
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 totals them with an open-source script without changing any figure.
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 run above USDA’s published headline (47.24 million vs 46.3 million for 2024). 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.