FARM Act

This bill, called the Foreign Adversary Risk Management Act (FARM Act), aims to protect U.S. farms and the food supply from risky foreign control. It adds agriculture to national security reviews of foreign investments and increases oversight of any deal that could give a foreign company control over a U.S. agricultural business.

Key points:

• Who is affected: Foreign investors, U.S. agricultural businesses (farms, food producers), and the federal committee that reviews foreign deals for security risks.
• What changes:
  • The Secretary of Agriculture is added to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (a federal group that reviews foreign deals for national security).
  • The committee must review any transaction that could result in foreign control of a U.S. agricultural business , and this includes a wide range of deals like mergers, acquisitions, or takeovers tied to agricultural businesses and products.
  • Agricultural systems and supply chains are treated as “critical infrastructure” and “critical technologies,” which means extra scrutiny in these reviews .
  • The Department of Agriculture and the Government Accountability Office must each report every year on foreign influence in U.S. agriculture, including investments, threats, and attempts to steal farming research or business data .
• When: The first reports are due one year after the bill becomes law, and then every year after that.