USDA Proposes Major Overhaul of AFIDA Rules: In Focus On the Revised FSA-153 and What USDA’s Paperwork Reduction Act Notice Signals For the Final Rule

This Advisory is the fourth in our series on the proposed rule (Docket No. USDA-2026-0001; RIN 0560-AI70) published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on June 25, 2026. Our June 2026 Advisory provided a comprehensive overview of the proposed changes to the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) framework. Our July 2026 Advisory focused on the new “beneficial owner” definition and the shift from an equity-based to a control-based test for foreign ownership. Our August 2026 Advisory examined how the expanded definitions of “agricultural land” and “any interest” could bring commercial real estate, energy, and infrastructure assets within AFIDA’s reach.

Here, we turn to the first significant development since the comment period closed on August 10, 2026: USDA’s October 2026 notice under the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) proposing a revised, electronic AFIDA Report (Form FSA-153) (FR Doc. 2026-22043). The notice does not itself change any regulation. But because it describes, item by item, the form USDA intends to use to implement the final rule, it offers the clearest view to date of which June proposals USDA appears prepared to keep and where its thinking has moved beyond the June text.¹

What is a PRA Notice, and Why Now?

Under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. Chapter 35), a federal agency that collects information from the public must obtain approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and invite public comment on the proposed collection. The AFIDA Report is approved under OMB Control No. 0509-0001 (expiring September 30, 2028), the number assigned when the collection was transferred from the Farm Service Agency (FSA) to USDA’s Office of Homeland Security (OHS) on May 8, 2026.

The June proposed rule stated that USDA would “publish a separate 60-day Federal Register notice soliciting public comment on the proposed revisions to the information collection requirements associated with this proposed rule.” OHS filed that notice on October 28, 2026, and it was scheduled for publication on October 29, 2026. The comment deadline is December 28, 2026.

USDA describes this as a “rule effectuated” PRA process: any changes made to the final rule in response to public comment “will be reflected in the final form,” and individual fields “may be updated as appropriate to ensure alignment with regulations.” Responses will be summarized in USDA’s request for OMB approval, and OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) reviews the collection independently.

In the rulemaking timeline, the notice shows USDA building the infrastructure for the final rule in parallel with its review of the comment record. The final rule has not been issued; it could be published as early as December 2026, with an effective date at least 30 days later, although there is no fixed deadline. Because electronic forms are costly to rebuild, the design of the revised FSA-153 is a meaningful, if non-binding, indicator of where USDA expects the final rule to land.

A PRA comment is also narrower than a rulemaking comment. USDA invites comment on the collection’s necessity and practical utility, the accuracy of its burden estimate, the quality and clarity of the information, and ways to minimize burden. It is not the place to reargue whether a solar lease is “agricultural land,” but it is the right place to show that particular fields lack practical utility, that the burden estimate is not credible, or that collection mechanics need to change.

The Revised FSA-153: What Changes

USDA groups its revisions into three categories (consolidating and reordering, refining, and adding questions) and walks through each of the 15 items on the revised form. Items 13 through 15 (certification, comments, and attachments) carry over unchanged. The table below summarizes the substantive changes and what we read each to signal.

USDA estimates 0.94 hours per response across 5,438 annual responses (5,000 new disclosures and 438 updates), or 5,109.5 hours in total: 30 minutes for the form plus 30 minutes for the GIS map on a new filing, and 15 minutes for an update. It treats the added questions as “net neutral” because filing would be mandatory through afida.landmark.usda.gov, and it expects legal representatives to prepare most reports.

What the Revised Form Reveals About USDA's Thinking

The notice does not respond to the 39 substantive comment letters on the proposed rule; that will come in the final rule’s preamble. Read against that record, however, a pattern emerges. USDA accommodated several practical requests (lease expiration dates, multi-holding submissions, an identifier menu, and an amendment platform). On scope, retroactivity, valuation, and confidentiality, the form restates the proposal or is silent.

A New “Ultimate Owner” Concept, Deferred to the Final Rule

The most significant development is one that does not appear in the June proposal at all. The proposed rule identifies foreign persons through the restructured “significant interest or substantial control” test, including the new control-based “beneficial owner” prong discussed in our July Advisory. The October notice introduces a further concept. In explaining the expanded ownership diagram, USDA observes that filers today may indicate an “ultimate” foreign interest with a dotted line from the third ownership tier, that “the lack of complete data shared often masks the foreign country(ies) associated in full or in part,” and that “[t]he final rule will provide the final definition of ultimate owner.”

The January 2024 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report illustrated the gap: a holding with a 51% Cayman Islands primary investor and a 49% Russian second-tier owner would be recorded in USDA’s data as Cayman-owned only. Where the beneficial-owner definition asks who controls the land, the “ultimate owner” concept appears designed to answer a different question: which country ultimately stands behind the investment.

Because the term would be defined for the first time in the final rule, interested parties should consider asking USDA to publish the definition for comment before it becomes a filing trigger. Under the Administrative Procedure Act, a final rule must be a “logical outgrowth” of the proposal, and a definition the June proposal never described could test that standard.

No Signal of Retreat on Who and What Must be Reported

The notice restates, without qualification, each proposed expansion of the filer universe discussed in our prior Advisories, from all beneficial owners and the 10% aggregate test to leases and easements of one year or more (any duration for foreign adversaries) and the expanded NAICS-based definition of agricultural land, including conservation land. The reportable-activity menu, lease and easement fields, and NAICS lookup are built around those expansions. We see no movement on the 10% aggregate test, the energy and pipeline NAICS codes, or easement reporting, each of which drew substantial industry opposition.

The identifier requirement also appears to have grown. The June proposal required tax identification and passport numbers of the foreign person, “if such exist.” The revised form asks “all owners” for a tax ID type and number, and the menu includes Social Security Numbers and Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers. That suggests USDA may expect identifiers for U.S. individuals in the ownership chain, not only for foreign persons.

The Retroactive Filing Requirement is Assumed

The clearest signal in the notice is the dedicated Item 1 option for a “Land Holding Newly Reportable under 2026 Update to AFIDA Regulations.” That option corresponds to proposed Section 5100.3(b), which would require filings within 90 days after the final rule’s effective date for interests that become reportable only because of the new definitions, and to the one-year reduced-penalty track in proposed Section 5100.4(b)(3). Commenters urged windows ranging from 180 days to three years, or prospective-only application, but the form gives no indication that the 90-day window will change. USDA’s estimate of 5,000 new disclosures a year also does not appear to account for a one-time surge of retroactive filings, a legitimate PRA comment point.

Tax-Assessed Value as a Fair Market Value Benchmark

USDA will use the new tax-assessed value “to monitor the differences between transaction prices and tax assessed values, which will be used in calculations of the land’s Fair Market Value.” The reference is to the land, not the filer’s interest, consistent with the June preamble’s statement that the value “of the underlying agricultural land” is “the value that Congress has mandated is subject to penalty.”

For lessees and easement holders, that distinction can determine the outcome. One renewable energy commenter calculated that, at the proposed accrual rate of 1.5% per week, a five-week delay on an option-stage lease over land valued at $8 million would produce roughly $600,000 in penalties, against a leasehold interest it valued at perhaps $80,000. A required tax-assessed value field gives USDA a land-value benchmark for every filing. Clients should assume that USDA has not accepted the “value of the interest” position and should preserve the argument.

A More Active Verification and Enforcement Posture

Several new fields are oriented toward verification rather than statistics. USDA justifies the new contact fields for owners, transferees, and the principals of representatives by its need to “reach out” and to “directly reach the foreign person.” The FSA Farm Number field will allow matching against FSA program records; GAO reported that a USDA data-mining pilot using such records in Washington State identified 135 likely non-filers. The loan fields will identify lenders even though security interests remain exempt. The merger, acquisition, and auction flags will surface entity-level and other deals that might otherwise be hard to identify. Together with the proposed penalty increases and the move to OHS, these fields point toward a program that expects to find and contact filers, not only tabulate their reports.

Lifecycle Reporting, but No Clear Exit

The new expiration fields indicate that USDA intends to track non-fee interests from start to finish. By contrast, moving “Land Use Change to Non-Agriculture” to an amendment platform suggests USDA views conversion as report maintenance rather than a separate event. The notice does not address when land “ceases to be agricultural,” a question several commenters raised.

Key Takeaways for Clients

The revised form is the best available guide to the information filers will need on day one. Its implications vary by sector.

Commercial Real Estate Owners, Developers, and Lenders

• Path-of-growth and pre-development land. Developers acquiring recently farmed land for future commercial use should expect to report both current and intended use (Items 4 and 5). Because the form does not resolve when converted land leaves the AFIDA system, developers should document conversion milestones and plan for amendment filings.
• Financing. On financed acquisitions, filers will be asked to identify the lender and loan number. Borrowers and lenders should agree in advance on what will be disclosed, and loan documents should address cooperation with AFIDA filings.
• Deal structure. The merger and acquisition flag confirms that entity-level transactions involving agricultural land are squarely in view. Purchasers should diligence a target’s historic AFIDA compliance and consider escrows or indemnities for pre-closing filing gaps. Sale-leaseback and operator-partner structures will generally answer “Yes” to at least one Item 9 prior-relationship question and should be prepared to explain the relationship consistently across filings.

Energy and Infrastructure

• Lease and easement inventories. Renewable energy developers and pipeline and transmission operators should inventory every site-control lease, option, easement, and right-of-way of one year or more, with expected expiration dates, and identify which interests would be “newly reportable.” Expiration and termination will themselves be reportable events.
• Mapping. Each holding will require an in-portal polygon showing current uses by area, including “Mixed Use” acreage where farming continues alongside generation. The notice does not mention bulk upload, API submission, or standard file formats such as shapefiles or GeoJSON, which are significant issues for portfolios with hundreds or thousands of parcels or linear easements.
• Valuation. Gather tax-assessed values for leased and encumbered parcels, and document the value of the leasehold or easement interest separately from the fee value of the land.
• Confidentiality. The notice is silent on protecting parcel-level geospatial data and reiterates that reports are made available to states and for public inspection. Operators concerned about public disclosure of infrastructure locations should raise the point in the PRA docket and consider confidential commercial information designations under 7 CFR 1.8(c).

Family Offices and Private Investors

• Personal data for “all owners.” The requirement that all owners provide a tax ID, phone number, and email, with SSNs and ITINs on the menu, may reach individual family members, trustees, and U.S. persons within a family’s holding structure. Family offices that prefer not to disclose organizational charts, passports, or personal contact details should evaluate exposure now, including under foreign data-privacy laws.
• Full ownership diagram. The third-tier limit on ownership disclosure would effectively end. Multi-tier family structures, including trusts, holding LLCs, and offshore vehicles, should be mapped to the end of the chain, with the “ultimate owner” question in mind.
• Decision-makers. Because the beneficial-owner definition turns on decision-making authority, family offices should identify which family members, trustees, protectors, or advisers have authority over the sale, lease, or use of agricultural land, and whether any of them is a foreign person.
• Inheritance and succession. Proposed Section 5100.4(b)(2) would apply a separate late-filing penalty track to transfers and to land acquired by inheritance; for inherited interests, the clock would run from when the heir knew, had reason to know, or should reasonably have become aware of the inheritance. Succession plans that may pass agricultural land to non-U.S. heirs should account for this.

Agribusiness

• Processing, storage, and supply-chain facilities. The NAICS lookup confirms the form is designed for the expanded definition, which includes farm product warehousing and storage, livestock wholesaling, and animal slaughtering and processing. Operators of plants and warehouses on commercial or industrial parcels, and tenants under third-party logistics leases, should assess whether those sites would become reportable.
• Cross-checks against FSA records. The FSA Farm Number field will make it easier for USDA to compare AFIDA filings against program participation. Agribusinesses that participate in FSA programs should confirm that their AFIDA filings, entity information, and program records are consistent.
• Operator relationships. Item 9 asks whether a foreign person involved in the transaction had an existing business relationship with the previous owner or was involved in day-to-day operations. Integrated operators, contract growers, and buyers that previously leased or managed the land should expect to answer “Yes” and should prepare consistent explanations.
• Public companies and widely held owners. With the proposed elimination of the shareholder exemption in current 7 CFR 781.3(h) and the 10% aggregate test unchanged, agribusinesses with dispersed foreign shareholders should consider how they would populate the ownership diagram and identifier fields, which the form does not address.

Open Questions

The notice leaves several important questions unresolved:

• What is an “ultimate owner”? USDA has not said whether the term is a control concept, an equity concept, or a country-attribution concept, how it relates to the beneficial-owner definition, or whether it will become an independent filing trigger.
• Who are “all owners”? It is unclear whether the identifier and contact requirements reach every equity holder at every tier (including U.S. citizens, passive limited partners, and public shareholders) or only persons the proposed rule requires to be identified, and what follows from checking “I do not have a Tax ID.”
• How will non-fee interests be valued? The notice does not say how a tax-assessed value will be applied to a lease, an easement, a linear right-of-way, or a partial interest, or whether USDA will accept a separate valuation of the filer’s interest.
• What will be made public? The notice does not identify which new fields (identifiers, contact information, ownership diagrams, loan data, or parcel polygons) will be withheld from public inspection or from the internet database that Congress has directed USDA to create.
• How will the amendment platform work? USDA has not described how amendments will be linked to original reports, how conversion to non-agricultural use will be documented, or when a filer’s obligations end.
• How will high-volume filers submit? The notice allows multiple holdings per form but does not address bulk or API submission, file-format uploads, or a one-time upstream-ownership filing that later reports could cross-reference.
• Is the burden estimate realistic? The 0.94-hour estimate does not appear to reflect multi-tier ownership diagrams, identifier collection, or a wave of retroactive filings. The notice also cites an “annual report to Congress,” although the June proposal acknowledged that the statutory annual-report requirement was repealed in 1998, a point that bears on “practical utility.”

Final Points

The revised FSA-153 remains subject to change, but it signals that USDA intends to keep the core architecture of the June proposal (the expanded filer universe, retroactive filings, land-based valuation, and deeper ownership tracing) while adding at least one undefined concept. Clients should not wait for the final rule to begin collecting the data the form will require.

Comments are due on December 28, 2026. Comments may be submitted through regulations.gov under OMB Control No. 0509-0001, by mail or courier to OHS, or to the OIRA Desk Officer for Agriculture. The most persuasive PRA comments will be concrete, quantifying parcels, leases, easements, ownership tiers, preparation time, and the expected volume of newly reportable filings. Commenters may also ask USDA to publish the “ultimate owner” definition for comment, confirm how non-fee interests will be valued, and protect identifiers, diagrams, and maps from public disclosure.

As we noted in our prior Advisories, many state foreign-ownership reporting statutes track or cross-reference AFIDA filing obligations, so a broader federal filer pool is likely to broaden state-level obligations as well. We are monitoring the PRA docket, OMB review, and the final rule closely, and can assist with assessing portfolio exposure, quantifying burden for comment purposes, preparing comments before the December deadline, and building compliance programs for the final rule.

© Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP 2026 All Rights Reserved. This Advisory is intended to be a general summary of the law and does not constitute legal advice. You should consult with counsel to determine applicable legal requirements in a specific fact situation.