Foreign ownership of U.S. farmland has recently attracted growing interest from the public as well as the federal and state policy makers. Using all reported AFIDA transactions, this article provides a comprehensive analysis on the structure of foreign land ownership in the United States. We find that (1) long-term leasing is the main driver of the increasing foreign interests of U.S. farmland in the past 20 years; (2) a considerable number of foreign transactions are related to wind and solar energy development, especially for entities holding long-term leases; and (3) “adversary” countries like China hold only 1% of all the foreign-owned agricultural land.
