The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) intends to take a closer look at U.S. land purchases by foreign individuals and companies over the last three years.

The agency doubled the number of staff tracking those transactions after a three-year gap of imposing disclosure penalties, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said.

From 2015 to 2018, USDA did not assess any penalties for violations under the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act due to a lack of staff. The act requires foreign investors to file a form with the Farm Service Agency detailing their land acquisitions and dispositions.

There are now six specialists at the USDA headquarters focused on the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act, and Vilsack said the agency is considering retroactively enforcing penalties that may have occurred during the three-year lapse.

“We have the power to do that,” Vilsack said during a hearing with the U.S. House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee in late March. “We’ve doubled the workforce focused on this issue with the express purpose of taking a look at where we might be able to assess those penalties.”

Only eight penalties for violations under the act have been assessed from 2012 to 2022, according to a USDA report. There were, however, a significant increase in filings during that same time period. There were forms for 911 parcels of land submitted in 2012, and that number increased to 6,363 in 2021.

Foreign investment in U.S. agricultural land has become an increasing concern among lawmakers. They questioned the effectiveness of the reporting law and USDA’s efforts to track purchases.

Last year, Congress included language in the appropriations bill that requires USDA to establish an online database for the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act data and to accept disclosure submissions digitally.

About 40 million acres of U.S. agricultural land are owned by foreign investors, according to USDA.

The Lone Star State has the largest amount of foreign-owned acreage at 4.7 million acres, mostly owned by Canadian investors.

Canadian investors own the largest amount of acreage in the U.S., followed by the Netherlands, Italy, the United Kingdom and Germany.