Agricultural Risk Review Act of 2025

The Agricultural Risk Review Act of 2025 aims to protect U.S. farms and food supply from risky foreign land deals. It adds the Secretary of Agriculture to the federal committee that reviews foreign investments whenever a deal involves farmland, agricultural biotechnology, or parts of the agriculture industry like transportation, storage, or processing. This committee reviews certain foreign investments and land deals for national security risks.

The act also tells the committee to check certain farmland purchases or leases that the Department of Agriculture flags. After USDA notifies them, the committee must decide if the deal falls under its rules and whether to start a national security review or take another action. These flagged deals include land purchases by people from China, North Korea, Russia, or Iran when USDA believes—using intelligence information—that the deal may be covered and when a report to USDA is required under existing farm land reporting law. These special checks end for a country if it is taken off the federal “foreign adversaries” list.

• Who is affected: USDA; buyers from China, North Korea, Russia, or Iran; U.S. farmland owners; and agriculture businesses, including biotech, transport, storage, and processing.
• What changes: The Agriculture Secretary joins national security reviews for farm-related deals, and USDA-flagged farmland deals must be checked and may face a national security review or other action .
• When: Applies when USDA refers a reportable farmland deal; country-specific checks stop if that country is removed from the “foreign adversaries” list.