Lawmakers of both parties are pivoting to stand-alone legislation to address at least one priority in agriculture, a concrete sign that some are abandoning hope that the farm bill will pass.
A bill to increase federal oversight of foreign acquisitions of American farmland was broken out from the would-be farm bill for its own track through Capitol Hill. The House passed the legislation 269-149 on Wednesday, with dozens of Democrats joining almost all Republicans on the vote. Senators introduced their bipartisan version of the legislation earlier in the week.
The bill would permanently add the secretary of agriculture to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, who would then be required to flag farmland purchases by foreign adversaries like China, North Korea, Russia and Iran for CFIUS.