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[Agriculture Fact Book 98]
Foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land remained relatively steady from 1981 through 1997--slightly above or below 1 percent of the privately owned agricultural land in the United States.
At the end of 1997, foreign persons owned 14.3 million acres--slightly more than 1 percent of the 1.3 billion acres of privately owned U.S. agricultural land (farm and forest land).
Forest land accounts for 45 percent of all foreign-owned acreage, cropland for 17 percent, pasture and other agricultural land for 35 percent, and nonagricultural land for 3 percent.
Corporations own 79 percent of the foreign-held acreage, partnerships own 12 percent, and individuals own 6 percent. The remaining 3 percent is held by estates, trusts, institutions, associations, and others.
About 61 percent of the reported foreign holdings involve land actually owned by U.S. corporations. The law requires them to register their land holdings as foreign if as little as 10 percent of their stock is held by foreign investors. The remaining 39 percent of the foreign-held land is owned by investors not affiliated with U.S. firms.
A total of 57 percent of foreign-held acreage is owned by investors (including individuals, corporations, partnerships, etc.) from Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France (in descending rank order).
Maine is the State with the largest number of acres (3,037,198) owned by foreign persons. Foreign holdings in Maine account for 17 percent of that States’s privately owned agricultural land and 21 percent of all the reported foreign-owned agricultural land nationwide. Four companies own 91 percent of the foreign-held acres in Maine, almost all in forest land. Two of these companies are Canadian, one is a U.S. corporation that is partially French owned, and the fourth is a U.S. corporation that is partially Canadian owned. Outside of Maine, foreign holdings are concentrated in the West and South, each containing 32 percent of all reported foreign holdings of U.S. agricultural land.
These findings are based on reports submitted to USDA under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978.
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