New Bill Puts Ag Secretary on National Security Watchdog, Targets Land Buys from China, Russia, and Others

The new Agricultural Risk Review Act of 2025 is all about who gets to buy U.S. farms and food companies, and who gets to decide if that’s okay. Essentially, this bill tightens the leash on foreign investment in American agriculture, specifically by giving the Secretary of Agriculture a much bigger seat at the national security table and creating a targeted review process for land purchases from specific countries.

The Ag Secretary Gets a Seat at the Big Kids' Table

Currently, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is the powerful, inter-agency group that vets foreign deals to make sure they don’t pose a national security risk. It’s typically focused on tech, defense, and infrastructure. Section 2 of this Act changes that dynamic by automatically adding the Secretary of Agriculture to CFIUS reviews whenever a proposed transaction involves "agricultural land, agricultural biotechnology, or anything related to the agriculture industry." This is a big deal. If a foreign entity tries to acquire a major food processing plant, a seed company, or even a large logistics firm that moves crops, the Ag Secretary is now guaranteed a voice in the decision, using their expertise to weigh in on risks to the food supply chain. This means the people who know farming best will now have a formal say on who controls our food production assets, which could be a huge benefit for national food security.

Targeted Land Review: The Four-Country Rule

Section 3 sets up a very specific new hurdle for agricultural land transactions. It mandates a formal review process for any deal where a foreign person from one of four countries—the People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, or the Islamic Republic of Iran—buys an interest in U.S. agricultural land. This review only kicks in if the Secretary of Agriculture suspects the deal might be a "covered transaction" (a deal subject to CFIUS review) based on intelligence reports.

Think of it this way: If a Russian investment fund wants to buy a thousand acres of corn fields, and intelligence agencies flag the deal, the government is now required to formally assess the security risk. This provision is highly targeted, focusing only on countries the U.S. government views as adversaries. While this enhances security by zeroing in on high-risk transactions, it clearly singles out investors from these four nations, potentially complicating or killing deals that might otherwise be legitimate investments. For farmers and landowners, this means that selling land to an investor from Beijing or Tehran just got significantly harder and will be subject to intense scrutiny, which could slow down the sale process considerably.

What This Means for the Real World

For the average person, this bill is about making sure the food supply remains firmly in domestic control, or at least under domestic oversight. If you are a U.S. farmer, you might see fewer foreign bidders for your land, especially those from the four named countries, which could affect prices and the speed of transactions. For the agricultural sector as a whole, this increases regulatory friction for foreign investment. While the goal is to protect critical infrastructure, the broad language in Section 2—covering "anything related to the agriculture industry"—could potentially drag tangential businesses, like certain software companies used in farming or specialized transport firms, into the CFIUS review process, slowing down innovation and investment across the board. The bill aims for security, but the cost might be increased bureaucracy and reduced foreign direct investment in a key sector.