Foreign Investment in U. S. Agricultural Land: An Overview of the National Issue and a Case Study of Vermont

A bstract . A number of issues surround the ownership of farmland by absentee owners and foreign nationals. The response to these concerns in the United States has been the promulgation of the Agriculture Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) which provides for a land purchase reporting system. The present investigation seeks to describe the nature of the foreign land ownership picture in the United States, the status of existing state laws which deal with the matter and. through the example of a case study on the State of Vermont , attempts to describe impacts and implications of such ownerships.