The leader of the United States Department of Agriculture has told federal lawmakers that no matter how much Congress tries, his agency’s ability to track China’s farmland purchases in the U.S. will never be perfect.
Secretary Tom Vilsack warns there’s only so much USDA can do to track who is buying what and where.
“No matter how much money you give us, it will always be imperfect for this reason: there are over three thousand county recorder offices around the country. Every county has a recorder’s office. It would require us to have a centralized database where every real estate transaction would essentially be put into a database to look at.”
But, Vilsack says, USDA’s moving ahead with other efforts, including on the GAO’s recommendation to work more closely with agencies linked to the Treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.
“I made a request of the Treasury Department for us to be more engaged in issues involving agribusiness, agriculture, farmland, and we have. We’ve been engaged and involved in a number of projects. We appreciate the fact that in this 2024 budget that was recently passed, it provided resources for the first time directly assisting us to expand staffing for that purpose.”
Vilsack says the USDA is also expanding its review of loans and tax records to identify foreign land purchases. However, he says Congress directed USDA to set up a web portal for data, but never provided the funding to actually get it done.
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