USDA unveils National Farm Security Action Plan to curb foreign ownership, bolster biosecurity

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins announced the department's National Farm Security Action Plan at an event in Washington, D.C., saying the plan includes immediate steps to restrict foreign adversaries' access to American farmland and to strengthen biosecurity across the food system. "With this announcement today, we are taking this purpose and our American farmland back," Rollins said.

The action plan lays out seven priorities that Rollins and administration officials described as measures to protect the nation's food supply and treat farm security as national security. Rollins said the administration had already canceled seven active agreements with entities in "foreign countries of concern," signed a memo that removes 70 individuals from USDA contracts or research arrangements, and would pursue regulatory action to remove more than 550 such entities from USDA's preferred catalog.

Why it matters: administration officials from the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Justice, White House advisers and governors said foreign ownership of farmland and foreign access to agricultural research and processing creates vulnerabilities that could be exploited for surveillance, supply disruption or biological threats. "Farm and ranch security is national…