By Noah Wicks
Agri-Pulse
he Agriculture Department has doubled the number of staff tracking foreign land purchases and is taking another look at past transactions after a three-year gap in the department’s imposition of disclosure penalties, Secretary Tom Vilsack said Thursday.
The department assessed no penalties for violations of the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act Violations between 2015 and 2018 due to low staffing levels in the office tasked with enforcing the law, which requires foreign investors to file a form with the Farm Service Agency detailing their land acquisitions and dispositions.